A real father wouldn’t have let her within a hundred miles of Cape Girardeau, and he certainly wouldn’t have let her plan the most dangerous escape attempt in the history of escape attempts.
The only father-like action he’d taken so far was to not utter a word of complaint, not even when she had tasked him with the hardest, most risky part. He was going to infiltrate the base while she stayed further back in a command center of sorts.
As she explained it: “I would do it but I can’t carry as much as you can.”
He had barely been able to carry everything she wanted, especially as he was forced to dress and act like a “monster.” As monsters didn’t carry anything, Jillybean had fashioned a drag harness attached to a sleigh. At first, as he slowly made his way around the outer part of the city, the sleigh hadn’t been much of an issue but as the miles heaped up, he found himself staggering, with sweat pouring off of him in buckets.
It wasn’t entirely out of place for him as a “monster” to be dragging odd items. He had once seen a zombie with a fisherman’s net strung about him that was filled with all sorts of refuse, including another zombie. And he had personally outfitted three captured zombies with ankle chains. The trio, wearing matching vests, were currently trapped in a garage two blocks from the fence line. Next door were another three zombies, and these also had vests, but no chains. They were Jillybean’s monster allies. She had a few thousand more in a warehouse complex a mile away chasing phantom voices that she had recorded, looped and was broadcasting with just enough strength to be heard in a five-block radius.
Strangely, perhaps because of the closeness of the river, there hadn’t been enough zombies for Jillybean’s needs. She had fretted over this, biting her lower lip raw until Neil had said: “The river is full of them. Too bad we can’t get them out of there.”
To which she had responded: “That’s a brilliant idea, Mister Neil, sir. We can get them from the river!” Neil didn’t want to lose the label of being “brilliant” and so didn’t ask how they were going to get slime covered zombies up a slime covered embankment.
Her solution was to extend twenty foot long, buoyed aluminum ladders into the river where the bank was lowest. A battery operated blinking traffic light set in a tree attracted the zombies who used the ladders to pull themselves to shore and up the bank. She then set up more blinking lights to entice them to the warehouse and just like that she had her army.
Having so many zombies around made everything a little more perilous, but just a little. Neil felt himself becoming more and more accustomed to being around the beasts once again and as he moved around the outside of the base, lugging the sleigh, none of the other zombies gave him a second look, especially as his strength diminished and his voice grew hoarse.
It was after dark by the time he reached his first position atop a hundred foot cell tower. Using heavy military binoculars, he had an excellent view of the bleachers where Grey was scheduled to die. On the off chance that Jillybean’s timetable could be moved up, he scanned the cage, but it was empty. The captain was still in the prison and wouldn’t be moved until the last minute.
And the meant the timing would have to be precise.
Although Neil’s part of the plan was dangerous, it was also relatively simple, while Jillybean’s was devilishly tricky and if the timing was off by even four or five minutes, Captain Grey would be halfway to being dead before they could save him which would make everything that followed a hundred times more difficult.
Jillybean had only the unknown span of time between when Grey was handcuffed to the pole and when the first lash struck to begin her initial distraction.
Because of the depth of the defenses, she had to arrange two different distractions simply to give Neil a fighting chance to slip onto the base without being seen and or killed.
“Just a chance,” he said, keying the send button on the radio once. It was their prearranged signal that let Jillybean know he was ready. “Just a chance, that’s all I need…and a cup of hot cocoa.” It was cold on the tower and, since there was no real reason to be up there just yet, he decided to climb back to the earth where it was a touch warmer, but one look straight down had his hands locking tight and his heart in his throat.
He hated heights and he hated how the tower swayed in the wind and he hated how his hands would go instantly moist, making the metal slip under his now frightened grip.
A state of panic had him, but only for a moment, only until, for the hundredth time, he pictured the unknown soldier having his skin flayed off of him. The burn from that overcame his fear, in fact it turned it to ash in his mouth and he went down the ladder, hand over hand, with a snarl on his lips.
Once at the bottom, he uncovered the goods on the sled: an M4 with a 4x60 DN463 Generatio3 Night Vision Riflescope with Illuminated Mil-Dot Reticle, a drone equipped with both a video camera and the insides of a claymore mine wrapped in cellophane with a radio transmitted detonator, a three-pound hand sledge, and a mask, snorkel and fins that went with the wetsuit he wore under his clothes.
Slinging the rifle, he snuck through the dark to get as close as possible to the fence line. He crept to within a block of the fence and, in the middle of someone’s backyard, he set the drone in the dirt and then flicked it to the ready/receive setting. Next, he reached out with a shaking hand and armed the detonator on the mine.
He slithered back and could feel the sweat cool on his face. It’s not that he didn’t trust Jillybean, it was just hard to be around any bomb, particularly one put together by a seven-year-old girl with zero military training. It had his heart going.
It was still thrumming as he pulled the sled east to the river’s edge where the zombies drifted by making a soulful moan. It was a haunting sound which covered the noise he made as he turned left, once more trying to get as close as he could to the fence.
This time he couldn’t get as close. The River King had erected a guard tower where the fence hit the water. Neil brought the binoculars up and saw two dark figures in the tower, one with a lit cigarette in the corner of his mouth and the other leaning against the butt-end of a machine gun.
Next to the gun was a searchlight that was only a very quick click away from illuminating everything on the river.
The sight of it gave Neil the shivers. “Pull it together, Neil. They won’t be able to see you.” He hoped. Even with his new-found hatred burning in him, bolstering his courage, it was hard to see how Jillybean’s plan was going to work. These were trained soldiers he was up against and he was nothing more than Neil Martin—a nice guy and an all-around little wimp.
Before the apocalypse his weapons of battle had been the calculator, the laptop and the dreaded spreadsheet and with them he’d been feared in a way. Now he was armed to the teeth and yet no one feared him.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said. “I’m going to die tonight.” He paused as if to allow his body to respond—it did. His heart rate slowed and the jittery feeling in his stomach vanished. “I’m going to die, but I guess I don’t seem to mind. Funny.”
It almost seemed like a part of him was looking forward to death. He shrugged at the idea, left the sled and its contents in the grass, and made his way back to the tower where there was really nothing for him to do but wait.
A check of his watch showed that he would have almost an hour to sit around doing nothing. In this regard, Jillybean was luckier than he was. She still had things to do to occupy her time. In fact she had too many things to do. Neil had wanted to stick around to help, but she insisted that a time cushion for him to get into position was necessary, just in case.
She was all about the “just in case” of every little detail. It should have been a comfort to Neil, knowing that everything that could be controlled was being controlled. But it wasn’t a comfort. Despite all her planning and devices and schemes, the only thing that was guaranteed was that he had a chance to get on the base. After that it was up to him to find Grey, kill his guards, kill anyone who
got in their way and get off the base again with it crawling with the River King’s men who were likely going to be as angry as bees.
“Nothing could be easier,” he said and settled into a comfortable position with his back to the cell tower.
At thirty minutes of nine, the radio in Neil’s hand clicked once, just a soft, very brief fuzz sound. If anyone else was listening to that particular channel, they probably didn’t even notice the sound, and if they had heard it, they probably weren’t all that concerned. Radios always made little noises.
Still, if they had heard it and were concerned, there was not much they could do about it. Scanners needed time to operate. They needed to be able to triangulate the signal—and Jillybean was already moving.
Actually, she had been on the move since seeing the death of the soldier. She had set a feverish pace that had exhausted Neil and now the little click of the radio told Neil that she was beginning to move her zombie army into position.
According to the plan, she would switch off the recorded human noises in the warehouse complex and then turn on the string of hooded lights that ran from the warehouse to the fence line opposite a small stretch of woods.
The lights could only be seen from one angle and, they hoped, the woods would keep the army from being noticed until it was too late.
Once the lights were going, Jillybean would race back to the river to release the “aqua-drones” as she called them. Using lifejackets, balloons and styrofoam attached to 2x4s capped with a sheet of steel, they had created eight mini-barges that were little more than small floating platforms. Each held enough of the potassium nitrate mix to blanket the thousand foot wide river in an impenetrable bank of smoke.
Although Jillybean called them drones, they had no steering device or motor. They relied on the gentle current of the river to move them into place. Of course, the little genius had taken into account the river’s speed and so the platforms were staggered along the river every seventy-five feet so that there would be enough smoke to last throughout the length of the operation.
Since Jillybean was so small, Neil had earlier pushed the platforms into the water. All she had to do was arm the thermal fuses and cut the ropes, letting the drones free. After cutting loose the eighth one, she would run back to the homes near the fence line where the six “monster drones” waited in their garages.
All that running around made Neil’s job seem easy. He stood, limboed a few cracks from his back and then began climbing the cell tower. When he reached the top he worked the binoculars over the growing crowd filling the bleachers. The place was already a mad house that he could hear from his perch.
A few minutes later, under a heavy guard, Captain Grey was brought through the opening and into the arena by the executioner who dragged him forward by a chain that ran to Grey’s handcuffed hands. He was followed by the River King who received a huge applause.
“Oh, crap! He’s early,” Neil said, checking his watch: it was twenty to nine. The zombie army would still be a quarter of a mile away and Jillybean would be just releasing her “monster drones” from the garages. It would take at least ten minutes to walk them to the fence, where she would have to chain them into position, while at the same time fooling both the zombies and the guards into believing she was also just a little zombie—in other words, she couldn’t hurry no matter how much Grey needed her to.
They had captured the “monster drones” earlier in the day, singling out the smallest ones they could find. Jilly had used her red dot scope to attract them into a house where upon they were tased repeatedly until they couldn’t even stand. Neil had rendered them mostly harmless by duct-taping oven mitts onto their hands and wrapping more of the tape around their mouths.
Still they could be dangerous if they suspected the little girl was more than she appeared.
A cheer went up from the crowd, causing Neil to blink. Grey had just been chained into position and now his clothes were being cut away—It was happening too soon!
Neil keyed the radio, sending out three long pulses that he was sure would cause Jillybean to panic. Once the last pulse was sent, he raced down the ladder as The River King began the opening ceremony in his spectacle of death.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the ringleader!” The crowd howled in a frenzy, stamping their feet on the metal bleachers, making the air thrum. The River King went on, his amplified voice carrying for miles: “Yes, this is the moment we have all been waiting for since this fiend blew up our bridge. This is the moment we have our revenge!”
More cheering, which Neil assumed signaled the beginning of the blood lust that would grip the crowd. He was on the ground by then and hurrying for the river, hoping to God that Jillybean had fired the remote thermal fuses—and that they worked.
She had tested one, proclaimed it good, and went on to make the rest. If they didn’t work, Neil would be forced to choose between making the attempt without them or going home empty handed. “And that’s not going to happen.”
He would make the attempt no matter what. It’s what Grey would do for him.
“Please,” he whispered as he pushed through the last of the foliage and saw the river…the wide open and very clear river.
Chapter 39
Neil Martin
Behind him, the River King proclaimed that the betting would end in five minutes. Neil, who had kicked off his shoes and was now struggling to get the first fin on his foot, checked his watch. They were still early by five minutes could spell the difference between failure and success.
Another glance at the river showed him it was still flat and empty, save, that is, for the hundreds of zombies Neil would have to maneuver around.
“Come on Jillybean,” he begged. The first flipper was on and there was no smoke. The same with the second. He wanted to call her using the radio, but he couldn’t take the chance. What if she was surrounded by a hundred zombies? What if she was still too close to the fence line? What if she had already been caught?
The answer to that was the easiest: “I’ll free her, too.”
He left the binoculars on the shore. The M4 went on his back. The three thousand dollar scope and the ten dollar radio went into a baggy and that went into the small pack he wore on his back. There were different compartments in the pack and each was filled with bombs, detonators, and extra ammo.
It was a heavy pack and the three-pound sledge only made it more so. Unwanted buoyancy wasn’t going to be a problem, but then again, neither was actually swimming. The fins would do their job at least for the hundred and twenty yards he’d have to traverse.
His point of entry onto the base was a rainwater drainage pipe that emptied into the Mississippi. It was well within sight of the guard tower, and was very likely barred in some fashion. Since they would have only minutes to complete the rescue, the bars would have to be blown off—thus the need for smoke to keep him from getting killed two seconds after the explosion.
But still no smoke as the River King cried: “It’s time! We are going for a record here, folks. Let’s see if our spy can endure a hundred and…”
Neil ducked beneath the water where everything was dark and murky. He blundered forward, gently kicking with his legs. A hundred and twenty yards was not far, however the three mile an hour current running straight into him didn’t help.
He kept his arms in, streamlining his body and pumped with his legs: up and down, over and over. After a few minutes, he poked his head up to get his bearings, hoping he hadn’t accidentally turned to the east. Somehow, he was still on course and was halfway to the pipe and still the river was clear. In the background of the moans and his own heavy breathing, he heard the crowd cheering.
Again, he went down beneath the water with only his back and the snorkel showing, knocking against a zombie who had no idea what Neil was. It didn’t stop to find out. Neil scooted away, huffing and puffing through the snorkel, his legs beginning to burn. He had to stop a second time and now his mask was fogged over and he couldn
’t tell which way was where.
When he lifted it up, however, he found that the mask was fine—it was the smoke obscuring his vision. It was finally creeping downriver! Behind him and to his left, he could hear the guards in the tower whispering to each other. They thought it was fog and it did have that gentle white appearance. But no fog Neil had ever seen grew so hugely thick so quickly.
Before he could duck down again, an alarm began to ring out, further up river. Perhaps one of the barges had been spotted through the smoke, or someone had caught the scent of it. There was no mistaking the smell for fog.
Neil didn’t bother going under again. The smoke was all around him now and he had to push on to the pipe before someone turned on the searchlight and saw him…too late!
A harsh white light swept over him but didn’t stop. Just as Jillybean had foreseen, the guards assumed that whatever attack was coming would come from the same direction as the smoke. The spotlight blazed straight into the white…uselessly. Just like with real fog, bright light was reflected and refracted, but did not penetrate it.
Seconds later, Neil was at the pipe and saw that there were indeed bars across it. Quickly he yanked off the fins and the mask, dug through the pack for a previously prepared C4 charge and pressed it into position on the top and bottom of two of the bars.
He then moved around to the other side of the pipe, prayed that the C4 wouldn’t just blow the entire thing to smithereens and him with it, covered his ears and pressed the detonator.
The explosion sent a shockwave through him and it felt as though he was pushed and pulled in two different directions. He was still lying there in the mud next to the pipe when the gunner in the guard tower opened up with his M240.
He was firing blind, but still his aim was ridiculously on mark. Bullets smacked into the pipe, whining off its rounded cement surface. They withered the air above Neil’s head, then slapped into the mud by his feet and danced across the water.
The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner Page 39