And she had succeeded where no one else could have, not even Captain Grey…if he had been healthy, that is. Sadie had hunted down a desperate little girl alone in the wilds. And not just any girl. She had hunted down Jillybean, whom everyone, including their enemies considered to be a genius.
It made everything else seem simplistic and that included outsmarting a band of slavers. “I hope,” she whispered when she had left Doug forty yards behind. She left the neck of the gulch and struck east on the highway, heading to where the larger of the two trucks had disappeared behind a bend in the road.
Just up the road from the truck, zombies milled about looking like tourists in hell, staring at all sorts of nothing. Sadie joined them, mingled with them and then began a loud moaning as she headed for the truck which sat as silent as the hills around them. She could see the lump of navy blue blanket sitting behind the steering wheel, letting out a light plume of grey with every breath.
There was a man hiding there ignoring the zombies and watching the shadows at the edges of the road, looking for a girl trying to sneak past, not realizing that Sadie was now almost within arm’s reach.
For the most part, the zombies loitered around the truck, because why would they come closer or attack it? There were millions of derelict trucks and cars just sitting along the thousands of roads criss-crossing the country, why was this any different? Sure, they had chased it minutes before, but now it was dead and cold, and any sign of humanity was long gone—or hidden beneath a blanket.
Sadie broke character just long enough to take a step up on the running boards to peer in at either Mike or Pecos huddled beneath the blanket. Only his eyes were visible, looking out past the zombies and towards the river. Sadie stared a second too long and his eyes shifted her way.
In a flash, she was down against the side of the truck. Its metal was cold against her ear as she listened to him shifting in the cab, probably trying to see if the movement in his periphery had been real or imagined. Going to her belly, she moaned and scraped at the pavement with her thin fingers as if she had just fallen, something zombies did a dozen times a day.
There were four or five undead beasts nearby who had seen her step up on the running board and were now more curious about her than they were of the truck.
They came closer. Sadie refused to panic. She clawed listlessly at the quarter panel, letting out an even longer moan. If they attacked, she was all set to roll under the truck and escape, however they were fooled by her act. They stood around her for a few minutes, smelling of rotted meat.
Eventually, they turned away as a single gunshot cut through the quiet night. With the echoes bouncing along the walls of the mountains, it was hard to tell which way it had come from and so the zombies went in circles.
With their attention directed away from her and the truck, Sadie had a moment to assess her situation: There were too many zombies around for her to try to sneak into the back of the truck or into the trailer without being seen, and she hadn’t noticed a gun sitting in the cab where she could snatch it up and stick it in Mike’s or Pecos’ face.
Which leaves me where? she wondered. She realized that she wasn’t going to get lucky, so that left her with the option of trying to come up with a plan. Cold minutes ticked by and her mind remained an utter blank. When she began shivering, she realized she had to do something before she either froze to death or the guy in the truck drove back to town. Both were bad things.
She liked them spread out. It made it easier for her to slip past them, and if she could catch a break, they would be easier to deal with one at a time.
So, the question was: How do I make sure this truck stays here?
One answer popped right into her head; it made her grin. With a quick look around to make sure that no one or no thing was watching, she slipped a hand into her pocket and fished out her pocket knife.
Slashing the tires would be too loud and too violent and so she went with the next best thing. Letting her incessant moaning cover what she was doing, she pressed the tip of the knife to the tire’s valve stem. An immediate hiss of air turned the grin on her face into a mischievous smile. It took some time, but gradually, the first of the dual tires began to settle.
She only paused from her work whenever one of the zombies wandered too close. With no other acting choice available, she pretended that she had been run over by the truck. It didn’t take much besides a flailing arm and a dismal moan—just as long as she didn’t act human she was fine.
When the air ceased to hiss, she snaked an arm past the first deflated tire to the next one in line.
The valve stem was harder to reach and thus the tire took what felt like ages to deflate. It sank so slowly that the driver didn’t seem to realize that his truck was now listing down and to the right, like a boat that had sprung a leak and was gradually sinking.
Once both tires were flat, Sadie shoved the point deep into the rubber of both, forever ruining the tires. Forgetting her zombie character, she crawled beneath the truck to get at the second set of rear tires, working on the inner one, first.
Deflating it from beneath was a lot easier and in three minutes, she stabbed the now flat tire. She crawled out from under the truck to finish off the outer tire. In spite of her painfully cold hands, she emptied the air out of it very slowly and once again the driver didn’t notice the slight change in angle.
One down, one to go, thought Sadie, as she stumbled her way back towards town. She worried that it looked strange for a lone zombie to be walking around and so she took a page from Jillybean’s playbook. Taking her lighter out, she put it behind her back and flicked it a few times until she had a good-sized group following her.
She led them the half a mile that separated the two trucks. This one sat pointing straight downhill square in the middle of the road, and for some reason warning bells went off in her head. Only the dark hid the fact that she wasn’t a zombie. If the driver, Mike or Pecos, flicked on his lights, she’d be discovered for exactly what she was.
Unfortunately, there was no time for her to change her appearance. She was just too cold to stop. Her feet felt wooden, her insides were jittering and her lower lip wouldn’t stop bouncing up and down. She had to disable this truck and then find somewhere to hole up where she could wrap herself in three or four blankets until her body heat stabilized.
With the temperature dropping, she looked like the stiffest zombie in the world. In fact, she thought she looked more like Frankenstein’s monster than a zombie. Regardless, the driver seemed to take no notice of her. Likely because a “girl” walking straight down the road with a gaggle of zombies coming behind her was the last thing he would have expected.
Still, he was a much more observant blanketed lump than the other driver. He sat up higher and had a better view. And with the truck in the middle of the road, she could not exactly sneak up from the side as she had with the last. A quick look in a side view mirror would doom her.
She passed the towed trailer and then stopped just behind it. This seemed to be the cue for the other zombies to stop as well, which wasn’t a good thing for Sadie. She couldn’t exactly pull out her knife with fifteen zombies within reach of her.
What she needed was patience, only she didn’t have time for patience. The cold had turned her lips blue and her fingers ached. Her options were to take a chance right there or leave.
As a gambler, she went with her instincts for chance. Turning away from the zombies, she clicked open the knife and leaned against the tarp covered trailer, just above the wheel. The knife slid right in. She feared there would be a popping sound like a balloon pricked with a pin, instead there was quick rush of air that seemed tremendously loud to Sadie.
Moaning with even greater enthusiasm than before, she took a step away and then slowly turned around to stare at the tire as it sank to the ground. All the zombies stared—not one of them able to connect the sound to Sadie. The air rushing out just was in their limited view.
Now for the next
one, Sadie thought as she slouched around the back of the trailer, only before she could get to the other side, the driver started his truck. It was so startling that Sadie was the only one of the zombies not to immediately charge the cab.
The driver put the truck in gear and roared out of there. He went about fifty yards before he slammed on his brakes and rolled down his window. A second later, a black gun was thrust out and fire leapt from its muzzle as the man began firing at her.
She was already in a full sprint for the river and the bullets swished the air in her wake. The zombies did not see her. Their focus was squarely on the truck and before the driver could get a proper bead on her dark figure, they were tearing at the doors and pounding the windows.
He was forced to speed off and by the time he got to the bottom of the hill, the one tire was in shreds and threatening to come off completely. At the edge of town, he had no choice but to keep going, leaving Sadie all alone.
Even alone, she couldn’t break character. Who knew if any slavers were up on one of the steep hills with some sort of hi-tech night vision goggles. She was forced to slowly lumber into town, and whether the bad guys fixed their tires and left was beyond her now. She had to save herself before she could save anyone else.
On the east end of town, there were a few homes across the river, each with their own little bridge. She resisted the urge to rush into one of these—they were too secluded. They seemed to scream: Hide here!
That’s not what Jillybean would do. She would be slicker than that. In fact, knowing her, Sadie guessed that the little girl would hide as close to her enemies as possible. She would get in close where they wouldn’t expect, where she could react to any mistake, where she could listen in on their conversations and count their numbers and assess their weaknesses.
It would be dangerous, but it was a gamble that could pay off in a big way. Sadie rolled the dice and headed right for the little scratch of dirt that the ranch house was on.
Chapter 15
Jillybean
Traveling at night had never been much of an issue for the little girl and her stuffed animal companion. They were smart, self-contained and careful. Driving at night was an altogether different thing and it held a special kind of terror. They both learned to fear the sunset.
The little KIA was not a tank. In fact, it seemed particularly delicate—its metal was thin, its glass brittle and its engine prone to mishap.
A side window went first, not an hour into the journey. Jillybean was easing down the center of Vienna, Missouri, a nothing little town with a living population of two, if Ipes were counted. Its undead population seemed out of synch with the local-yokel environs. There were more undead than there were houses, cars, mailboxes and telephone poles put together.
They were also oddly congregated in the center of town as if waiting on the one-KIA parade. “Oh jeeze,” Jillybean said, taking the first left she could onto Mill Street. She was usually good at left-hand turns and rarely hit anything at all; right-hand turns were another story. She could never tell exactly where the front of her car ended when going right.
There didn’t seem to be a mill on Mill Street, there were only more houses and the road was cluttered the way many in-town roads seemed to be. There were bikes keeled over on their sides, and suitcases flapped open with people’s undies and sweaters showing, and papers everywhere like a book tree had lost all of its white leaves. And of course, there were dead cars which were rarely parked in an orderly manner. Perhaps strangest of all to Jillybean were the number of microwave ovens sitting in the gutters.
Had people forgotten that microwaves ran on electricity and only just remembered after lugging them out to the curb?
It was mystifying as well as aggravating to Jillybean. She almost hit one. As she was carefully porting around it in the dark, she didn’t see the monster until it was right on her. There was a thump on the other side of the car that jerked her around in her seat.
At first, she thought she had hit something, but a second heavy thump came and she realized that the opposite had occurred: something had hit her! Before she could properly react, it hit the KIA a third time and in went the window. Cold air and glass splashed inside.
Ipes screamed and so did Jillybean—these were not the proper reactions, but her body knew screaming better than it did the controls to the car which were still so foreign to her that she had to consciously direct her feet to the gas or the brake.
Only once the monster was half-inside did she find the gas and squirt ahead through the debris. She fully expected the monster, a scabby disgusting thing, to just fall away, however it had too good of a grip and it didn’t just hold on, it began to climb inside! She found herself swinging her head back and forth from the monster to the road.
If it gets in, how do you propose to get it out again? Ipes asked. In the last year, they had both seen a number of monsters trapped inside cars. How they got either in or out never crossed her mind.
“I don’t know.” She usually relied on her old standby: I’ll think of something, but just then she was having all sorts of trouble of thinking about anything, including driving.
Just to keep the KIA in a straight line usually took all of her concentration, only now her concentration was divided between a monster invasion and not killing them by running into something sturdy, like a building or a tree.
“Shoo! Shoo!” she yelled in a ridiculous attempt to get the monster to leave.
Shoo? That’s your plan?
“I don’t have a plan!” She was getting crazy nervous as the KIA sped faster and faster! In her panic, she didn’t realize that she had her foot mashed down on the glued stack of blocks that represented the gas pedal. In the dark, things just seemed to materialize in front of her: a parked car on the side of the road, a monster in the middle of it, a deer bounding across it, and a tree growing up out of someone’s lawn.
Car! Ipes cried, making a jabbing motion with one hoof. A second later, he jabbed again and again. Monster! Deer! Tree!
Jillybean broke out into one long scream as she dodged the speeding KIA all over the road, and the sidewalk and a front lawn. The tree took off the side view mirror that had already been dangling by a few wires and at same time, it made the monster disappear.
There was a bang and a metallic scream and some sparks and a lot of tree bark flying around, and when she glanced over, the monster was just gone.
Brake! We’re safe now. The brake is on the left…no, that’s the gas again. Are you trying to kill us, or what?
“Don’t blame me, I can’t see which is which. It’s too dark. And really, we’re fine and I’m sure the tree is fine and we didn’t hit that deer, so that’s good.”
When they made it the rest of the way through the little town unscathed, Jillybean pulled over and went around to inspect the damage, hoping there wouldn’t be much beyond a few dents and scratches.
“Not bad,” she remarked after making a short tally: a headlight was smashed into shards, the front passenger side door was crumpled in and wouldn’t open, the mirror was gone and, of course, the window where the monster had been was now in a thousand little pieces.
I think you’re going to have to take a class on what constitutes good and bad. We’ve barely gone thirty miles and already you’ve turned this car into a heap.
“It still runs, but if you’re too ascared, you can…” A flash of light dried up her words. It had been just a blink, as if someone had pulled back a blackout curtain for a peek out into the night.
Or they pulled back the curtain long enough to slip outside, Ipes suggested.
“Ah, jeeze,” Jillybean whispered as she rushed back around the car and climbed up onto the pillows she kept stacked on the driver’s seat. As much as she wanted to rush out of there, she kept her foot off the gas and crept along, hoping to slip past without being seen, or heard and that meant she couldn’t hit anything.
Not hitting anything wasn’t easy, as the road was still littered with all sorts
of trash that had to be dodged. Even going only five miles an hour wasn’t easy since Jillybean couldn’t stop staring off to her right, looking for more flashes of light.
Concentrate, Jillybean. Don’t look over there. If there was a bad guy coming, we would have heard his car. So, we’re safe just as long as you concentrate. He talked for five straight minutes, and only sat back with a sigh of relief when they had left the light a mile behind them. Maybe it had only been someone going out to go pee or something?
It was possible, but to be on the safe side, she detoured onto a little blacktop road that wound through the forest and hills in a generally southwest direction. The name of the road kept changing from names to numbers until, even with a map, they were lost.
She pulled over at the first gas station she came across. Please let them have cookies, Ipes prayed as Jillybean climbed down from her pillow-seat and came to stand next to the pumps. Or Cheetos. I love Cheetos. Remember when we used to beg your daddy for Cheetos every time we went to get gas?
“Shush.” Although they were miles from where they had seen the light, it didn’t mean they hadn’t stumbled into new danger. Nowadays, everywhere and everything could be dangerous. She paused, listening, straining her ears to hear any sound that could be human or monster in origin.
I think we’re clear, Ipes said after a minute of silence. Now, about those Cheetos…
“Trust me, I’ll get some if they have any, but you know they won’t. Though they might have some gas. The smell is pretty strong and that’s what means there might be gas in one of these pumps.”
But what about that sign?
Taped across the front of the pump was a piece of paper. She leaned in closed, squinting at the faded lettering: Empty! it read.
“It doesn’t smell empty. Maybe the guy who owned this place was holding some back, just in case, you know?”
Maybe he was holding some Cheetos back, too.
At Ipes’ urging, she went to the station first and found a terrible mess. She risked beaming her flashlight around for a minute. The risk paid off and she came back to the KIA with a map of the area, seven lighters, two Slim Jims she found beneath an empty candy rack, and two cans of fix-a-flat, which always came in handy since one can could mostly inflate a flat tire.
The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner Page 14