Then it was on to a new block; this one a full seventy yards long. Fifteen minutes later she crossed the street, looking very tiny. In the passenger seat, Ipes was snoring loud and pointedly.
After seven more minutes and five more yawns, Jillybean put the car in gear and coasted up the block. It was a waste of gas, she knew, but it was either that or fall into her own coma. She slid up next to the woman and with the monsters coming to attack the KIA, Jillybean yelled: “Is it much further?”
“Oh no, not at all. Just two more blocks. You can go ahead if you wish. It’s number eight, one, three.”
“Thanks, I’ll see you there!” With the monsters only steps from the rear bumper, Jillybean had to yell the last part as she hit the gas and spurted away.
813 Moline Way was the oddest of places to Jillybean. Amazingly, the old woman had not done a thing to fortify her home. Her door had the strength of two-ply balsa wood and the only nod to the current apocalypse was that her blinds were drawn.
Really, any old monster could smash its way right in with very little effort. Perhaps the most redeeming “safety” feature was the immense run of bushes that surrounded her property. They looked to Jillybean as if they hadn’t been trimmed in years.
She scooted the KIA up the drive and although it was a small car, the bushes were so overgrown that the branches on both sides scraped her car. They also hid it for the most part from the monsters. But to be on the safe side, she darted around to the side of the old woman’s house and watched from the corner to see what the trailing monsters would do.
They mulled around the car for a while and then stood in the brown lawn. Though it was cold in Oklahoma, the snow had fallen far to the east, leaving the ground bare. Every once in a while, one of the monsters would stoop and pull a handful of grass up by the roots and munch away.
“What are they going to do when winter really hits?” Jillybean wondered, aloud.
Probably the same thing they did last winter, Ipes answered. They’ll get really skinny and come spring they’ll eat all the flowers until they’ve fattened up a bit.
“I kinda meant, what are they going to do here. Oklahoma is all barren and dry. You’d think they’d starve to death.”
Starve? I doubt it. Remember that one that ate all the bark off your daddy’s cherry tree? I think they’ll eat rocks if they had to.
Sadly, Jillybean thought that he was likely right. She watched the monsters feed or just stand around doing nothing. Eventually the old woman came through the small break in the hedges, the annoying squeal of her cart preceding her by five minutes.
As if they were no more dangerous than a pack of garden gnomes, she walked right between the monsters, and going to her garage, she bent all the way down as far as she could reach and hauled the door upwards. The garage was empty, save for a single monster, a disgusting woman zombie with blood and pee coming from her vagina.
“What are you doing in here, Jenny?” the old woman demanded. She wheeled her cart around behind the monster and banged it into the back of her legs saying: “Git. Git going now, ya hear?”
The monster allowed this, something that fascinated Jillybean, reminding her of how compliant the monsters had been with the Azael. The other monsters continued to ignore the woman as she pushed the monster named Jenny, and they ignored Jillybean as she came out of hiding.
Of course, she moaned and lurched about like a proper monster. Once more she fooled the old woman, who came at her with the cart. “No, it’s me,” Jillybean hissed.
“Why didn’t you say so. Put your car in the garage. I’ll keep the zombies back. They’re pretty stupid you know.”
Jillybean was actually more worried about parking the KIA in the garage than she was about the monsters. Her ability to go from gas to brake, and to steer in tight corners was admittedly weak. Still, she had little to do but keep the car aimed straight and stop before she rammed out the back.
As expected, the monsters immediately bustled after the car when she turned it on. In her fright at being trapped in a small car that would be trapped in a small garage, Jillybean gave the KIA too much gas and it practically leapt into the garage, careening into lawnmower and snapping a rake square in two.
Still, she didn’t hit the back of the garage and that was somewhat of a victory. The moment the KIA stopped, she jumped out and through the back door. The backyard was as unkempt as the front. The surrounding bushes were even wilder and there were countless “baby” bushes sprouting all over the place. Jillybean guessed that it wouldn’t be long before the term yard wouldn’t be applicable.
As expected, the old woman’s kitchen door was unlocked and Jillybean found herself in a surprisingly clean little bungalow. There were three neat little bedrooms with cozy quilts layered on each mattress, a dining room set for six, a warm den with a fireplace that had hot ash banked in the corner, and a bathroom that needed airing out.
It was a perfect little place—and that’s what had Jillybean on edge. If there was something Disney had instilled in her, it was that witches were old, ugly, and lived by themselves out in the wilderness. And they seemed to have a fetish for helpless little girls. Jillybean pulled out the police special and waited for the woman to bustle inside.
“What’s that for,” she asked after squinting down at Jillybean. She had a smile that displayed alarmingly over-sized dentures. She had a stale smell to her. It wasn’t a yucky smell, just an old one as if her and her clothes hadn’t had a thorough washing in a while.
“I just need to be careful,” Jillybean answered, feeling self-conscious about the gun. “And that’s what means there are a lot of bad people in the world. Are you a bad person?”
The old woman said: “I don’t think so, but that’s up to God to decide. I don’t steal if that’s what you’re worried about, and I couldn’t hurt a fly even iff’n I wanted it to, and I wanted to this last summer let me tell you. I chased them all over but I couldn’t get them at all, no ma’am.”
“I don’t like flies either,” Jillybean admitted. She looked down at the gun and decided she would keep it close, but not out in the open. It seemed rude to have it out. “So what do you want to trade?”
Everything it seemed. The old lady started offering everything, including her house and all she wanted in return was Jillybean’s flour and sugar.
Jillybean made a face that suggested pain. “That’s the stuff I want the most. When I got to Colorado I was going to make bread and sugar cookies for my family.”
“You still have family?” The idea at first shocked the woman and then made her sad. “I don’t know where my family is. Dead, probably. I only had two boys left and they were old. They wouldn’t have lived. My grandkids maybe, but they were in Florida, where a lot of all this started. I like to think they would have come to get me if they were still alive, but maybe that’s wishful thinking.”
“Maybe not. My sister came to get me a few months ago. Maybe your grandkids just got held up by things. It’s not easy crossing the planet anymore. There’s lots of bad guys out there.”
The old woman eased herself down on a couch that someone had, oddly in Jillybean’s view, covered in plastic. She sat still as stone for a few moments and then began to cry. She wasn’t loud about it, the tears just leaked out of her eyes, disappeared among the crags of her face, only to reappear on her surprisingly hairy chin.
After sometime, in which Jillybean fought off a succession of yawns that wanted to stretch her face, the woman spoke: “That’s why I don’t hold out hope of ever seeing them. Chances are they’re dead and if not, they have to think I’m dead. But…but why am I going on like this? We should be talking deals.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t anything I want of yours,” Jillybeansaid, frowning a little. “And all the stuff I have, I kinda need.”
“I guess that’s the way it is then. No hard feelings, little miss.” Jillybean started to get up and the woman’s face bent in sudden misery once again. “Wouldn’t you like to stay and c
hat awhile? I haven’t seen anyone in an age. Well, no one I care to talk to. You say you have a family? In Colorado? How did you get way down here?”
Jillybean told an abbreviated version of her story. She left out entire sections such as everything that had happened before they got to the River King and half of what happened after. When she had to tell longer parts, she made sure not to use words like murder and execution and insanity, saying instead that she had done: “bad things” and was “not right in the head.”
“Oh you poor dear, you should stay here with Granny Annie. That’s what my grandkids used to call me when they were little tots. Why, we could have just the best time. I could show you how to make bread and cookies. I’m a whiz in the kitchen, you know. My late husband got so fat he couldn’t even tie his shoes!”
Jillybean got momentarily caught up with the words “late husband” thinking that Granny Annie might be a little crazy herself since it was obvious that she lived alone and that her husband wasn’t late, but dead. But as it was a harmless sort of crazy, it didn’t bother Jillybean so much.
Either way, she couldn’t stay. “I wish I could, but I have to get back to my family.”
Granny Annie humphed: “They don’t sound like much of a family to me, letting you go off on your own like that, and not hauling you back when they found you. I’m sorry, Jillybean, that’s not the way a true family behaves. I could be your family. Will you please think it over?”
The little girl yawned so wide that she showed all her teeth and her tonsils as well. “I guess I could but I have to sleep first. Maybe I can swing by this afternoon to chat before I go.”
“What? You’re leaving? But I have a spare bedroom. It’s very comfy. Come look.”
Jillybean was shown to Granny Annie’s guest bedroom, though to her it didn’t look like any guests had stayed there in a very long time. The dust was thick and the air strangely heavy as if it were getting tired of waiting around to be breathed.
She didn’t want to stay in the room, mainly because a part of her didn’t trust the hunched-over witchy looking old woman, and yet Jillybean didn’t want to be rude. She agreed to stay, but as a precaution, she pushed the dresser in front of the door and slept with her .38 under her pillow.
Chapter 17
Sadie Walcott
At just about the time Jillybean closed her eyes for a seven-hour slumber, Sadie awoke, stiff and cold, and hungry and scared…and she had to pee.
It was too cold to pee. Going to the bathroom would mean getting out of the three comforters she had wrapped herself in. It would mean exposing herself and sitting down on a freezing toilet seat. That sounded like torture.
Of course, holding it was a torture in itself and eventually she got up, hurried to the bathroom and relieved herself in a stiff squat, hovering inches over the seat. It wasn’t pretty, but it kept her flesh from touching. The bathroom had been looted of toilet paper long before and so she used a washcloth and for some reason, felt the need to apologize to some long-dead homeowner.
“Sorry,” she whispered, tossing the cloth in a half-filled hamper. “Now what do I do?” she asked herself as she took one of the comforters she had used the night before and wrapped it around her shoulders. She had escaped the slavers and lived through the night. Both were fine accomplishments, but in the clear light of the cold morning she realized that what lay ahead would be infinitely more difficult.
She had no food or water. She had no weapons and no transportation. It was true that she could escape the little canyon town and make her way back to Estes—if she wasn’t killed by zombies, captured by the slavers or die of the cold—but what would happen to Captain Grey and the others?
“Maybe ransomed, maybe sold to the River King. Maybe they would die in some two-bit Azael arena, fighting like gladiators? Or maybe I help them escape.” She said this last bit without much enthusiasm. It didn’t seem likely, especially as her enemies were all armed with guns and the most she could scrounge was a long, kitchen knife and a rock the size of a baseball.
She crept to the front window, her “weapons” in hand. She had heard a clang of metal and a muffled curse. Two of the slavers were out in the cold, changing the slashed tires on one of the trucks. Next to the truck were the two tarp-covered trailers parked side by side. One of them was sitting on a blackened rim and nothing else.
One of the men yawned, spat and farted all in a row, making Sadie’s lip curl. With the clean cold air, she heard it even from across the road.
“That bitch isn’t worth this,” the farter said, sitting back and letting the tire-iron clang to the ground. He started unscrewing the now loosened lug-nuts with a grease-stained hand. His hair on his head was a shaggy brown mop, hanging five inches below his collar. His beard matched it in color and style.
“Watch what you’re doing,” the other snipped after giving a glance over his shoulder. This man was lanky with a hooked nose and protruding watery eyes. “You know there’s stiffs around. They can hear good, you know.”
“I dropped a tire-iron, so sue me, Doug. You shouldn’t even be blaming me. It’s Pecos who sat there and let his tires get popped. How could he not hear it? Too close to the river? What a load of bull.”
Doug shrugged as he glanced once more over his shoulder. “I don’t know. The river can be loud and there were a bunch of stiffs out last night all around him and they aren’t quiet.” He grunted over his own tire-iron, his face going red with the strain. Finally, it budged and he began to spin the tire-iron in quick circles. “You may be right about the girl. She is a nut-bag.”
“Yeah, she is. I wouldn’t have gone running around with all them stiffs out there. Not without a gun. Fucking crazy, but as long as she looks good. That’s what counts.”
The two were quiet for a time working on the tires, lifting off the outer ones and going to work on the inner ones. Doug glanced over his shoulder down the road every few minutes and licked his lips continually until he finally whispered: “Hey, Brian, do you think we’ll get a shot at her?”
Brian stopped working at the tire and just sat there for a minute before saying: “I hope so, especially if we get her before Smitty gets back. Hey, you know what? If you finish here, I’ll go back up to the plateau and scout for her and if I see her, we’ll share her.”
“Okay, sure, sure, but why don’t I go instead. You had a chance at her last night and couldn’t catch her. You’re too slow.”
“We’ll go together,” Brian said, “so hurry up with your side.” Doug actually finished first by a good margin and left Brian, heading straight up the side of the gulch. Brian cursed under his breath and rushed the next tire into place, barely tightening the lug-nuts. Then he too was tromping up the side of the gulch.
Sadie watched him go and then glanced back at the unattended vehicles. They were ripe for the taking except they were within feet of the house which the slavers were occupying. Smitty, Doug and Brian were gone and that left how many men? She knew of Mike and Pecos, but were there others? And if so, how many others were there? And how many would be keeping watch?
She went to the door and peeked out. There was thirty feet of open road that had to be crossed. “I can make it…if I’m quick. And there’s nobody quicker.” She hoped. If she were caught, her speed was all she had.
Out she slipped, keeping low. Anyone looking down from the plateau would spot her in an instant, but why would Doug or Brian be looking back the way they had come? No, they’d be looking out at the town. And the men inside the house? It had been a long night, probably even longer for them than for her.
They’d be sleeping all except whoever was watching the prisoners—that guy would be bored. He would pace or read or alternate between staring out the window and watching the prisoners. The thought froze Sadie halfway across the street.
With her nerve shattered, she couldn’t move a muscle except to whisper: “Shit.” She was still standing there when a man walked out of the house with his hands working at his zipper. He tu
rned immediately to his right and began peeing against the side of the building in a long stream.
Sadie slunk down and judged that it would be safer to slink forward, using the truck as cover, rather than to try to run across the open road. She started creeping forward when the man made a noise. At first, she thought it was some weird hissing growl, but she realized he had sighed only in the middle of it he’d been struck by a yawn. He made no pretense at being quiet and nor did he bother with aim. His urine arced higher and higher onto the side of the house.
A new look of disgust twisted Sadie’s features as she made it to the back of the truck and watched the man’s lower legs and the spray of yellow as it banked off the siding. It seemed to go on forever.
Eventually the spray turned to drips and there came the sound of a zipper going up. Her expectation that the booted feet would head back inside were dashed as he turned and started walking straight for the truck!
Quickly, she crawled, spider-like, beneath it, desperately trying to keep her black coat from scraping against the dirt drive. The coat was some sort of nylon weave and any scrape no matter how slight would have been heard. As she crawled on, one foot at a time, she watched the boots approach the front of the truck.
Please just look in the front seat, please just look in the front seat, she pleaded, silently. He bypassed the front seat and kept going around to the back and stopped at the dual set of back tires.
“What the hell?” he growled, squatting down. With the twin tires in the way, she could only see part of his knee, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see her. She froze as he reached out to touch the tire. “Those stupid fucks.” He straightened, his feet first pointing one way and then the other.
It was now fifty-fifty for Sadie. Her black Converse sneakers were sticking well out from beneath the back of the truck, but she couldn’t move any further without alerting the man. If he went to the back, she would try to crawl the extra few feet, only she didn’t like her chances.
The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner Page 16