The Undead World (Book 8): The Apocalypse Executioner

by Peter Meredith

  “Sorry,” Jillybean said, over her shoulder as she raced for the ladder to the second floor. She had to wait a few seconds for Neil to fall from it as the truck whipped back and forth.

  From the floor, Neil yelled: “Do something! Grey is ramming them to keep them off of us.”

  “Get Sadie!” Jillybean yelled back as she leapt onto the ladder and started climbing. “Don’t trust the others. Not yet.” She was on the second floor just as she finished her warning. Rick’s room was not even three steps away and she burst in so quickly that she sent a dozen or so empty liquor bottles flying.

  They had come rolling from under the bed and they went scurrying back again as the truck took another hard turn. Jillybean braced for another impact but instead Grey spun the wheel the other way and out came the bottles again.

  She ignored them and opened up the steel locker at the foot of the bed. Inside were a few M4s, a couple of hunting rifles, some ammo and two grenades.

  Disappointment froze her there and she was still staring half a minute later when Neil and Sadie came into the room. Jillybean held up the grenades. “This is it.”

  Neil grabbed them and said: “They could work. All we need is one good throw.” He turned and headed for the ladder to the turret with the two girls following. When Sadie tried to mount the ladder, he stopped her. “Stay here. You are only to come up if something happens to me.”

  Jillybean thought that was silly. They had their own .50 caliber machine gun, Jillybean had her M79 and Neil had his two grenades. It made more sense to throw everything they had at the bad guys in one fell swoop.

  “Come on,” Jillybean said, showing Sadie the grenade launcher. They went up the ladder to find Neil crouching down in the turret, with his eyes barely edged up over the lip. The other truck was on a parallel course, thirty yards to their left and half a length back.

  “Can you throw that far?” Jillybean asked.

  He made a face and shrugged. “Maybe, I think. Here, move back.” He took a deep breath, pulled the pin from the first grenade and heaved it in an arc at the truck. It bounced once ten yards short and exploded harmlessly a few feet from the side of the truck.

  Not even half a second later the enemy opened fire with the .50 caliber: Bam! Bam! Bam! Sadie flew down the ladder with Jillybean a step behind. Captain Grey, reacting to the sound, swerved right and went up a sharp embankment and once more everything was cockeyed. Jillybean hung by her hands, her feet dangling, her body twisting in response to gravity pulling her around.

  She lost her grip and fell with a thud. Dazed, the little girl found herself lying on the corpse of Rick, staring up through the portal as glowing tracers raced by.

  They were hypnotizing in a way and she watched them with more curiosity than fear, right up until Neil crawled to the portal and dove down, head first. He tried to grab the second rung and ended up doing a contorted, gravity-assisted cartwheel, and when he landed, somehow on his feet, he almost crushed her face.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said and then looked back up as the truck righted itself and the ride became so smooth it was like driving on glass. Neil stated the obvious: “We’re on a road. Maybe if they get close enough…” He stopped and started patting his pockets and staring down around at the floor of the truck.

  “What did you do?” Sadie asked, incredulously. “Did you lose the other grenade?”

  He looked up at the portal. “I don’t know, maybe. It’s not here. You know what? It’s probably right up there.” He went up the ladder until his head stuck up into the daylight. When he glanced back down at them, it was with a guilty look on his beat up face.

  “So, Jillybean are you any good with that grenade launcher? Because the other grenade must have rolled away.”

  “I think I can hit a truck.” She was sure she could, however she didn’t know if it would do any good. The grenades were small and lacked the punch needed to pierce armor.

  Still, she had to try. Picking up the launcher, she went up the ladder and poked her head above the edge of the turret. They were on a two lane country road and where it headed and where it had come from she had no idea. What mattered was that she had perfect conditions to fire the gun.

  Putting it up to her shoulder, she rested the barrel on the turrets edge for support, aimed and fired. A shock of white light, orange sparks and grey smoke appeared square in the front of the truck, striking where the grill should have been if it hadn’t been replaced with a slab of steel.

  The steel had been dented and marred but otherwise remained intact. Jillybean gave it and the truck a hard look, studying it for any potential weaknesses. When the .50 caliber opened up again and more rounds started smacking into the turret, she went flat on her back, cracked the M79, popped out the casing of the spent round and stuck another in its place.

  Neil poked his head up and remarked: “Sounds like you just pissed them off.”

  “Yeah, hold on.” She rolled over, waited for a lull in the firing before standing, aiming and shooting the M79 in a span of a second and a half. Again, she scored a direct hit and again the truck rolled on.

  “For all gal-darn it!” she griped, lying back down again. “These shooting grenades are too small. We need something with more power.”

  The turret was getting ripped up again and only the top few inches of Neil’s head was visible. “I sent Sadie to scour the truck but I doubt she’ll find anything.”

  Jillybean ran down the list of everything she knew about the truck and its contents. There was only one thing that stood out as a weapon and that was the truck itself. “I gotta see Captain Grey.”

  “But he’s all the way in fron…” was all Neil could say before Jillybean monkeyed over the top of the turret and raced across the roof with the wind blasting into her face and tracer rounds whisking by from behind.

  She was nimble and quick, her coltish legs speeding her to front of the truck to where the roof dropped down eight feet to the top of the cab. She turned and slid down the wall until her Keds were firmly planted.

  “Mister Captain Grey, sir?” she asked, leaning precariously over the edge and gazing down at the soldier. He sat amid a pile of glass and the tangled limbs of two bodies.

  “It’s about time someone gave me a sit-rep,” he cranked. “Is everyone okay?”

  She climbed into the cab as easily as if she were playing on a jungle gym back in the old days. “Yeah, all ‘cept the bad guys. They’re all dead. Hey, do you happen to know how we can…”

  Neil suddenly poked his head over the top of the cab; he was breathing in great gusts. In a display of over-caution, he climbed down into the cab and sat next to one of the bodies. On one hand, he acted like it wasn’t there and on the other he acted as if it might come to life and grab him.

  Jillybean, pretending not to notice, gave him a nod and a smile and continued, asking Grey: “Do you happen to know how to defeat that last truck? We tried shooting the little grenades and throwing the bigger ones, but nothing seems to be working.”

  “And there’s nothing else in the truck except a few rifles,” Neil added. “I suppose we could try to arm the slave-girls and…I don’t know.” He finished with a half-hearted shrug.

  Grey made a growly sound in his throat as he thought this over. He then curled his lip and shook his head. Jillybean had to agree. The captive slaves were as weak-minded as they were weak physically.

  “What about using the truck itself?” she asked. “Can you crash it into them somehow?”

  Grey was quick to reply: “No. I’ve never driven a big-rig like this before and I’ve been lucky so far just keeping out of reach of them. If they quarter-panel me, we’ll jack-knife for sure.” Jillybean looked at Neil, who shrugged again. Grey sighed and explained: “If they hit me on the back edge of the truck, it’ll cause that side to slide outward.”

  “And then we crash, right?” Jillybean asked. It was a rhetorical question as she was easily able to imagine the competing forces acting on the different parts of the truck.
And yet something wasn’t adding up. “Do you think the other driver is better than you? You know, more experienced.”

  “Yes.”

  “That suggests you haven’t been ‘lucky’ about being jack-knifed. It suggests that they would rather not destroy this truck and kill everyone in it.” She went silent for a moment and then the simplest solution to their predicament struck her. “How much gas do we have? Can we just out distance them?”

  Grey shook his head. “We have less than a quarter tank. Chances are that they have a similar amount and with a better driver they’ll get better mileage.”

  They passed a sign I-71 3 Miles. The road would be wide open. It would be suicide to get on it—but suicide in what way? “The women are valuable to them. So how will they try to kill us but keep them alive?”

  “By killing me,” Grey said. “If they can get just a little ahead, they can shoot me easily and that will be that. But now that you’re here, Neil we can raise the armor.”

  “Don’t,” Jillybean said. “They have a rocket like the one you had Mister, Captain Grey, sir. It’s strong enough to blow up the entire front part of the cab.” The image of what the AT4 had done to the fourth truck flashed into her mind: the initial blast and then the secondary explosion that went out the sides.

  Grey was saying something about not wanting to get shot or blown up, but the little girl wasn’t listening. She turned away, slid to the end of the bench, and cracked the heavy door that led to the outside world.

  What she was looking for was under her feet protected by three inches of steel. “Go on to the highway and keep ahead of them until we’re ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Grey asked.

  Jillybean’s one word answer: “Revenge.” Everything she needed was on the truck. A missile would have been better than the idea she was entertaining, and so would a mine or even a drone, but she didn’t have these things. She had one of man’s earliest tools: fire. It was a clever tool: both liquid and gas. It could flow around armor to find the weak spots.

  But they would have to get close to use it and they would have to have the element of surprise. She had five minutes to get her plan in place. “Let’s go!” she barked at Neil as she mounted the roof of the cab in a quick swing of her leg. To get a hold of the second level she took a running jump and even then she barely got her fingers on the edge.

  She struggled until Neil came up behind her and shoved her straight up, giving her a wedgie which she took the time to loosen before she ran for the turret, crying: “Sadie!”

  The goth girl popped her head up. “Yeah?”

  “I need a hose of some sort and two lighters and some fabric.” She also needed her backpack. It was right where it had fallen after the guard had shot it. She wasted no time and dumped out the contents onto the floor next to the dead guard.

  “What’s the plan?” Neil asked as he came down the ladder, nearly slipping once more. Jillybean expected a snide comment out of Ipes concerning Neil’s clumsiness and was prepared to remind Ipes that Neil only had eight fingers but the zebra remained on the floor with the other odds and ends, altogether silent.

  “Fire in a bottle,” she answered. “It’s called something like molly cocktail which sounds like a drink, but these are gonna be ones you don’t drink. We’re gonna throw them.”

  Neil nodded however, as always, there was a question on his lips: “Where are we going to get the bot…”

  She jumped up and opened the door to Rick’s bedroom, where empty alcohol bottles rolled on the floor. She began stuffing them into her backpack. “Sadie!” she screamed, “I also need a broom and a white…never mind, just a broom.”

  Rick’s pillowcase had been white at one point. Now, it was an ugly grey. Still it would work. “Take these to the Captain Grey. Don’t break them,” she warned.

  Neil darted away with backpack as Jillybean gazed around the room. Rick was a smoker and there was a lighter next to an ashtray on a nightstand. She grabbed it, the pillow case, and a sheet that was foul smelling and stiff.

  “Sadie!”

  “I can’t find any hose!” she yelled back.

  Jillybean gathered the pillow and the sheet and dragged them back into the hall. “Forget the hose.” It was a ridiculous thing to say. How were they going to siphon the diesel from the tanks? “One thing at a time,” the little girl whispered.

  When Sadie ran up with the items she had been asked to gather, Jillybean explained the plan. “Start the fire now but keep out of sight.” Jillybean was about to run off when Sadie grabbed her and squeezed ferociously without saying a word.

  They had no time for words. Jillybean balled the old sheet, went up the ladder and then scampered to the front of the truck. The enemy truck was still behind them, but no one shot at her. She made it to the cab and immediately barked orders at Neil: “Use that sledge hammer and break open the dash. We need a hose.”

  Grey was just pulling onto the highway and he floored the vehicle as Neil began bashing at the dash. “They’re two hundred yards back,” Grey warned. Fifteen seconds later: “A hundred and fifty.”

  Jillybean was shredding the sheet with a knife while Neil was hammering as hard as he could and finally cracked his way into the engine compartment when Grey said: “Fifty yards,” and began swerving back and forth.

  There were three hoses in reach: one was scalding hot, the other was too short and the last ran up from the windshield wiper reserve tank. Jillybean reached as far as she could for the last and cut off seventeen inches of it.

  “Hold me,” she said to Neil and went to the door. The wind was sharp and cold, and the engine was a roar in her ears. With Neil grasping her by the collar of her pink shirt, she crawled out onto the armor covered gas tank.

  It was designed with a hinged panel to give access to the gas cap, which was, thankfully within easy reach. After unscrewing it, she held out a hand. “Bottle.”

  The bottle came and with it the truck lurched hard to the left. Neil held tight as she went about siphoning the gas. The diesel tasted awful and her head spun from the fumes. The rocking of the truck as Grey fought to keep the other truck back didn’t help, either.

  After a minute, and three mostly filled bottles, she vomited onto the pavement rushing past. Neil hauled her back in. “I’ll get the rest. Take these three to Sadie and stay back there. Captain Grey and I can handle things up here. If you don’t trust me, trust him.”

  “I trust you. We made it this far, right?” She grinned and just like Sadie had, he hugged her tight and then gave her a little push. She climbed onto the roof of the cab still smiling. “You know what, Ipes? Maybe it will be okay.” When he didn’t answer, she remembered that she had left him next to the dead trader.

  “Poor guy. I bet he’s ascared.” She was the one that should have been ascared. Climbing to the second story of the rig with three bottles of diesel on her back while it lurched back and forth with ever increasing violence wasn’t easy, but she persevered, going on her hands and knees until she was able to climb into the turret.

  By then the enemy truck had its nose up against the back quarter panel of the truck. If the driver wanted to, he could have sent their truck jack-knifing all over the road.

  “Quick,” Jillybean said to Sadie, “wave the flag!” Whether Neil was ready or not, they had to begin the plan. There was no telling what was going through the enemy’s mind.

  They had no idea how many people were conducting the raid that cut out the slave truck. They had no idea how many had survived or what was going on inside. Jillybean had Sadie start a fire to put it into their minds that resistance was still occurring within.

  The fire set the stage for the white flag.

  From their perspective, locked away in their armored truck with only peepholes to see out of, Sadie would look like any other slave. They would see fear and desperation. The bombs were no longer being thrown and the .50 caliber had ceased firing. They would be cautious but optimistic. They would concentrate on the driver.
They would go after Grey and he would be vulnerable as soon as they got ahead.

  Sadie stuck the pillow case on the broom and raised it, canting it slightly so that it wouldn’t blow away. It flapped in the breeze for a moment before she slowly raised up. “They’re pointing the gun at me,” she said, out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Wave it harder,” Jillybean answered. The little girl was crouched in the corner, stuffing strips of the blanket into the bottles and then turning them over briefly to soak the “wicks.” The trucks were so close that metal ground on metal and a queer vibration swept up from beneath her.

  And yet, Jillybean still wasn’t afraid. A wild fantasy suddenly struck her: this was a battleship and she was the ship’s captain! If she radioed Grey and told him to slam on the brakes, he would. If she told Sadie to throw the first cocktail, she would do that also. And Neil did everything she asked.

  Her command just then was: “Grey, this is Mouse. Give us more time.”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, the truck responded, heeling left and then breaking off to the right. In time, it bought them seconds only. In one other aspect, it helped a great deal.

  “They’re pointing the gun forward, now,” Sadie said.

  Jillybean resisted the urge to look. The trucks closed on each other once more and now Grey was forced into the far lane. The grinding of metal came again as the trucks jostled for position, but now there was a new metallic shriek as Grey was pushed against the guard rail.

  “This is it, one way or the other,” Jillybean said. She had the bottles ready and nestled in her backpack, a lighter in one hand, her thumb ready to flick it into life.

  “Get ready, Neil,” she said into the radio. “However many bottles you gots ready will have to be enough.”

  “I have three,” he answered. “Well, two and a half.” His queasiness evident in his voice.

  Once more the silly fantasy gripped her and she said: “All it takes is one. Make it count.” Had she heard that line in a movie or was she just making things up as she went along?