Again, she found herself sneaking up on what looked to be an ordinary two-story red brick home.
Jillybean rattled the knob on the front door and found it locked. “Strange,” she whispered, moving around to the back yard where a snow covered swing set sat across from an above ground pool which was empty, save for a collection of moldy leaves.
She found the sliding kitchen door locked as well, and the side garage door. Stepping back, she looked up at the house and really didn’t know what to make of the home. She couldn’t remember the last time she had found a house that hadn’t been touched by zombies or man.
A sudden thought came to her: Maybe the people who used to live here still do! Quick as any cat, she slunk down below the level of the windows, her heart going like crazy and her mind going even crazier: What if the people who lived here were weirdos? But what if they were normal? What if they were nice? What if they liked her and what if she liked them?
“I don’t know,” she said in a shaky whisper. What would she do if they invited her to live with them? Would she actually stay and forget Sadie and Captain Grey and Neil? “Maybe…they don’t know about all the stuff I did…and I wouldn’t have to tell, neither. They could like me if they didn’t know. And don’t people who have kids like kids?”
She waited on an answer from Ipes, but he was just sitting in the crook of her arm staring at the brick as snowflakes came to land on it for just a half second before disappearing, leaving behind tiny wet marks. It was as if they had left but forgot their shadows.
Would the people in the house understand about Ipes?
“No,” she said, her excitement draining away. No one understood about Ipes. “Well, Sadie does. She knew I had to find you and she didn’t even try to stop me. She knew you’re important.”
I always liked her, Ipes said, coming awake. You know, there isn’t anyone home in there, right? You would have felt it or sensed it. The pool would’ve been cleaned out and the grass hasn’t been cut all summer.
“I guess I was thinkfully wishing. It would be pretty cool to find kids, you know? I wish I hadn’t let those other ones go.” She shivered, not from the cold but at the memory of where she had found the kids and how she had rescued them from what was in essence the torture chamber of a witch. The shiver went deep into her core.
It was a moment before the little girl got over it. “That’s…that’s all in the past. They’re probably in Estes by now. Like I should be.”
She knew she had to break into the house, but a part of her wanted to leave it alone. In a way, it was perfect in that it hadn’t been desecrated. If the family was still out there, what would they think when they came back to find the doors smashed in?
“They wouldn’t be happy,” she said, feeling unhappy for them, because in her heart she knew they were dead. Most everyone was.
Stepping around some prickly bushes below a deep bay window, she stood on the tips of her Keds and stared inside.
The house was perfect or as close as any house came anymore. She could see part of the kitchen where a few cupboards were flung open as if the owners had left in a hurry. Other than that, there wasn’t anything out of place, but not in the stringently neat way the old grandma’s home had been.
This house had proper messes: a school bag sat on the kitchen table, some papers, crooked and uneven, spilled half out of it. Next to it was a text book, which for some reason got her excited. In the sink was a small pile of dishes and in the doorway of the kitchen was a sock. It was a clean sock, Jillybean could tell by how flat it was.
“Probably fell out of laundry basket.”
Or a suitcase.
“Yeah.” Had it fallen out of a suitcase that had been hurriedly packed by a frightened child? Likely. Jillybean remembered how it had been back at the beginning of the apocalypse when no one knew what was happening: the over-riding and constant fear, the suitcases packed and repacked, the complete uncertainty that made every minute of every day nerve-wracking.
“We should go in, shouldn’t we?” She didn’t need the zebra’s answer, she knew the truth—she was in a desperate position and the people who had lived there were dead. “They would understand, if they were alive,” she told herself.
A minute later, she broke a basement window, kicking it in as gently as she could, trying not to disturb the beauty of the house. Inside it was agreeably warm and, yes, just as homey as she thought it would be. She came slowly out of the basement but didn’t rush for the kitchen cabinets where she had spied a few cans and nor did she hurry to the garage where there was possibly a second car filled with gas.
Instead, she walked all around the home and, with the snow falling, the place was well lit with ambient light, probably looking as it had back in the before. It was fantastic, but not perfect.
Year-old fear sat heavy on the air. Little touches, such as the sock spoiled it. Not knowing why, but only knowing that she needed to, she fixed the house. She shut the cabinet doors and picked up the sock. In the master bedroom, she shut the empty drawers of a dresser and in the bathroom she put away the few remaining pieces of makeup that had been scattered about.
Gradually, as she tidied up, the fear in the air dissipated, being replaced with a feeling of anticipation. Once again it was a home waiting for its people to come back from wherever they had gone: the movies or church or a long camping trip.
Grinning now, Jillybean went back to the kitchen, equally excited about what lay in the cupboards as she was about the text book. There had been a piece of paper sitting squarely on top of it and she hadn’t seen what it was.
Pulling the piece of paper away, Jillybean’s face drooped, unhappily. It was a language arts book. Back in the before, it had been her favorite subject—now it seemed superfluous. People could speak and write and read enough to get by, but no one cared anymore where commas were supposed to go or what a gerund was.
Jillybean certainly didn’t. What interested her now was how a water pump worked and how to make a homemade bomb using fertilizer, racing fuel and a blasting cap, or how to weld.
With a sigh, she put the piece of paper back exactly where she had found it. As she lined up the edges, she saw the handwriting; it wasn’t a child’s as she had expected. It was from a woman…the “mom” no doubt.
Dear Jack,
We’re going to my mom’s place. I’m sorry, but we waited as long as we could, but the girls are getting scared, and so am I. The army isn’t telling us where you are or what’s happening at all. This is the third time I’ve written this letter. I don’t want to leave, but we can hear the guns now and I don’t want to wait until the last minute. That’ll be worse.
If the army lets you go, get up to Scottsbluff as fast as you can.
I love you, Jack, always,
Lauren
“Jack and Lauren. They sound nice.” Jillybean flipped open the language arts book and found a real piece of homework with the name Tristyn written across the top. “I know where Scottsbluff is. It’s in Nebraska. Remember the sign? It’s practically on our way to Colorado. We could go see if Jack just went straight there. Maybe we can play with Tristyn. Do you think that’s a boy or a girl? I bet it’s a girl, cuz of the letter. Well, I hope it’s a girl, like me.”
Only there weren’t any girls like her and Jillybean knew it. She was a seven-year-old mass-murderer…a one of a kind.
“We can still go,” she mumbled.
Ipes swiveled his head up to stare hard into Jillybean’s face. Why? You already have a family who loves you.
“Never mind,” she answered, putting the homework back where she had found it. Ipes tried to question her some more, but she ignored him, busying herself with climbing the kitchen counters and emptying the shelves of what remained.
Lauren had only done an adequate job of packing for her trip to Scottsbluff. All of the “real” food was gone, but there was plenty left over that fell into the edible category that wasn’t quite food: apple vinegar, a gallon of vegetable oil, a two-p
ound bag of sugar and a five-pound bag of flour, a tin of cocoa powder, tea, coffee, salt, etc.
It was all quite valuable. And tasty, Ipes said squirming, eagerly in her arms. If I’m not mistaken, flour, sugar and cocoa can be ginned together to make some sort of cookie conglomeration.
“Not yet. We can’t just start baking. We got to load up the car and finish exploring. Besides there aren’t any chocolate chips. What good are cookies without chocolate chips?”
This quieted him enough for her to finish emptying the shelves. Next, she went to the garage and was disappointed not to find a car there. There was a riding mower and a red jug that netted her three gallons of gas.
It wasn’t quite a miracle, but it was a relief. Three gallons would get her ninety miles further west. The garage also had a number of items, very few of which Jillybean really needed: hand tools and camping supplies, bikes and bottles of alcohol.
Turning her nose up at it all, she went back inside looking for Tristyn’s room. She was a girl and a girly girl at that. Everything was pink and wonderful. Tristyn was a year younger than Jillybean and yet they wore the same sized clothes. It was a relief to get out of the “boy” clothes she had been wearing.
Jillybean first tried on a green and white dress, just for fun. We have time for dresses but not for cookies? Ipes asked, outrage making his voice squeak.
“This is different,” Jillybean said, without explaining how. Any argument went right out of her head when she saw the shoes in Tristyn’s closet. One pair especially jumped out at her. They were made of a clear rubber and, sitting there in the closet, they didn’t seem like much. Once they were on her feet, however, they came alive.
Whenever she stepped the shoes lit up in a variety of colors, each flashing for a brief moment, almost as if there were a circus attached to her feet.
Jillybean stared down at her feet as she paced around the room, mesmerized by the lights. She went around the bed for a few minutes until Ipes rolled his beady eyes and sighed: You know you can’t ever wear those outside this room.
This deflated her and she went back to the closet one more time to look at herself as she was possibly supposed to be. It was a perfect picture, except for her hair. It had grown past fly-away and was now long and full of waves that coursed down her back almost to her non-existent hips.
The dress came off and was hung back up in the closet. The shoes were harder to part with. Jillybean was only seven. Those shoes would have been perfect for her budding expression of individualism.
In the end, she let them go and put back on her Keds that fit her little feet perfectly. A pair of girl blue jeans went over these and then a warm sweater with a big-eyed anime character decorating the front went on her skinny torso. Above all of this she tugged back on her monster-wear so she could blend in an instant.
Reluctantly, she loaded the car and said goodbye to the house, secretly vowing to go to Scottsbluff if she ever had the chance. She would go as the bearer of bad news: Jack had never come back—Lauren’s husband and Tristyn’s daddy was likely dead.
Jillybean followed the road south, still heading the wrong way and still not realizing it. She also failed to realize that the KIA was leaving tracks in the light snow that any idiot could follow.
She passed a number of homes that could be seen from the road and after stopping at the first three and finding them disappointingly torn apart, she ignored the next few. It wasn’t until she saw another break in the trees that couldn’t be explained in any natural way that she stopped.
Down a forty-yard drive she found another pristine house. This time she didn’t pause for emotion or wishful thinking. Those things only hurt. Once more, she went in through a basement window, but only because they were easier to reach.
This house had the car in the garage that she was looking for and it, too, had cupboards that hadn’t been picked over properly. The Kia was, for the first time in a year, topped off, while it’s cramped interior practically overflowed and that was okay. In fact, it was more than okay.
If she could find another few houses like this one, she would have enough in the way of supplies to see her all the way through to Colorado.
The idea so contented her that she gave in to Ipes’ pleading and made cookies, adding ingredient after ingredient to the batter in the vain hope of striking on something close to her mother’s recipe. The cookies were desperately missing eggs and yeast, and more importantly, a properly functioning oven.
She only had cord wood and a jury-rigged stove. She pulled out the lower drawer and used the ten-inch space for her heating element, shoving the smaller pieces of wood in. Smoke billowed up the sides of the oven and it wasn’t long before the kitchen became blistering hot. She opened every window to keep from passing out and, red-faced, she tended the cookies, flipping them over and over again so they wouldn’t char.
As they baked, she saw many errors in this first attempt and knew that the next time they would turn out far better. Still, the cookies weren’t bad, especially compared to another meal of cat food or liver. The choco-sugar cookies were smokey and a little stiff, like cool taffy, and yet they were the tastiest things she had eaten in months.
Her and Ipes scarfed down an entire plate. Before she knew it, there were only crumbs left which she took her tongue to. Groaning with a bursting tummy, she sat back in her nest, staring at the hazy ceiling.
As the fire slowly ate itself into nothing, she worked her tongue around the inside of her mouth, capturing the very last of the flavor, and yawning every thirty seconds or so.
Eventually, she fell asleep, her mouth hanging open, Ipes tumbled away, dangerously close to the oven and the sparks that snapped every few seconds. For an hour she lay there, sweat building across her brow dreaming in short bursts about a big man named Ram, a white dress and a doll house that gradually grew bigger than the world, and during that time the fragrant smoke puffing up from beneath the oven grew thin and grey.
And yet it still hung over the house, and the neighborhood and half the countryside around it. The nearby monsters, as always, grew confused at the sweet, and now nearly alien aroma of cookies. The humans nearby were not. They were drawn to it.
The sound of trucks in the driveway woke Jillybean. She sat up, just as confused as any of the brain-dead monsters wandering around in the snow. As her eyes blinked at the last of the smoke, and she stretched in a long and back-cracking yawn, her heat-dulled mind tried to work out where she was and why she was suddenly filled with dread.
It was then that she heard the sound of footsteps crunching in the snow. They were slow steps, stealthy steps…evil steps. The sound came to her from both the front of the house and the side, and she knew right away that people were coming for her. They were coming to get her and do who knew what with her.
Chapter 10
Sadie Walcott
She hit the peak of the hill, expecting to see a down slope similar to the one she had just climbed. Instead, she found herself looking nearly straight down at the river, three hundred feet below.
“Holy shit,” she whispered. It wasn’t a straight shot down the side of a smooth-faced cliff, but it was close, at least it looked that way to Sadie, who had no choice but to take this frightful route. Behind her, the moans of the zombies drew closer.
Down she went, moving like an inverted spider: head back, butt scraping against the rocks, hands and feet out, grasping at every tenuous hold as gravity pulled her on. She wasn’t exactly “climbing” down.
What she was doing was delaying the moment that she would fall, bouncing off of one outcropping of rock after another, tumbling and spinning out of control until she either hit the road with a bone-crushing thud, or the river with its two feet of icy water covering a stone bed.
She felt hitting the road would be a cleaner death…or rather a quicker death. “Not that I want either. Come on, Sadie, you can do this.” She needed the pep talk. The “gentle” slope of rock had given way to a vertical plunge and now she had to f
lip over and climb for real.
What gave her hope was that the cliff was made from stratified rock. Over millions of years, one layer of sediment built on another and with each layer there were minor ledges and dusty handholds. “It’s just a ladder,” she told herself. She wished she could tell herself not to look down, but that was the only way she could plan where to put her foot or hand next.
Looking down was dizzying and terrifying, and necessary, but so was looking up.
Sadie had just taken her eighth step down when pebbles started cascading around her. She looked up, just in time to see a huge grey figure sliding down the rocks right at her. There was no time for curses or screams, there was only time to lunge to her left, grasping desperately for a new hold as the beast came so close that it thudded heavily against her shoulder.
The blow sent her just a hair too far and the ledge she was aiming for slipped past her fingers. She made a wild grab at a second one, only the shelf of rock was strewn with fine sand and she lost her grip. Now, a scream built up as, along with a rain of pebbles, she slid down the front of the cliff face.
The scream became a heavy grunt as her feet hit a ledge and her right hand found a nodule of granite, a stout knob that could hold ten times her weight. She breathed a sigh of relief just as a second zombie tumbled past not two feet away.
She snapped her head up as three more came flying down the cliff. Two passed safely to her left, but the third came right at her. Trusting the granite nub, she swung out, holding on with just the one hand. The zombie passed so close she could see her reflection in its greasy black eye.
Then she swung back, her feet finding the ledge. For the next few minutes, it rained zombies and sometimes parts of zombies: teeth, fingers, scalps and a few times even heads. She did what she could to dodge them, but even with the little knob giving her some room to maneuver, she knew she wouldn’t be able to last. It would be just a matter of time before two came down close enough together and knocked her off her perch.
The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner Page 9