Next, she had Steinman drain a few cups of power steering fluid, fill the reservoir and bleed the brake line of air. While he was working on that, she checked on Jimmy again. His wound was still trickling blood and would until she was able to put some sutures in it.
There was no time however, so she only put on a new field dressing and gave him four large white pills. It was Tylenol since she wanted him alert as possible, but to add the placebo effect to the pills, she warned him how strong they were. Then it was just a matter of topping off the tank, sending the drone out ahead to scout the only route into the park and getting out of there.
Steinman insisted on driving. “You think they’re setting up another ambush?” he asked, staring at the screens so intently that his nose was only inches away.
“So far everything is clear,” Sadie said. She was up front working the drone at five hundred feet. “I really doubt anyone is going to do anything. They probably thought we were easy pickings and ol’ Hank gave them what for.”
“But what if that was just a few of them?” Jimmy asked. “Like a guard force or something? What if the main group is down there?” He gestured with his good arm, pointing towards the front where the windshield used to be. In its place was flat black metal, but the others understood the gesture, nonetheless.
Steinman could only shrug. “Then we deal with it. We still have Hammering Hank. He’s in good enough shape.”
They were quiet for a while, each lost in their own thoughts as Steinman took the twists and turns of the road which meandered down the mountains. Jillybean was, for a reason she couldn’t name, caught up with the name Steinman had given Hank.
“Shouldn’t it be Hummering Hank? He is a Humvee and all.”
Steinman scoffed: “Hummering Hank? That sounds ridiculous. Hammering Hank as in Hank Aaron. You never heard of Ham…what? What the fuck?” His foot was bouncing up and down on the brake pedal, while on the screen, the side of a mountain looked to be rushing right at them.
Chapter 3
Jillybean
“Seat belts!” Sergeant Steinman bellowed, his foot still uselessly going up and down as the Humvee accelerated along the steep slope. Jillybean, her eyes frozen on the front screen, already had hers on; Ipes always made a fuss when she was too lazy to click it on. Her initial reaction was to grab the interior frame of the Humvee with both hands and scream—then she felt gravity suck her forward as Steinman downshifted.
Although it only slowed them a bit, the move showed a clear head, dissipating her initial panic. Next to her, Jimmy was still in that first stage and was trying to buckle his belt with his good left hand. The angle was all wrong. He started cursing in a high voice: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” The fucks sounded like a countdown to their impact.
Without thinking of the consequences, she popped her belt off and dove across Jimmy’s lap, thinking she would buckle him in. In his panic, he was spazzing and she received an elbow in the temple. It was a solid thump that had her muscles going limp for a three count.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jimmy cried.
The moment her head was half-way to clearing itself, she grabbed the metal end of his seatbelt and jabbed it home with a proper click. A second later, the Humvee went off the road and onto the shoulder.
Desperately, Steinman tried to keep away from the edge as the road curved, however, their momentum was too great; they struck the rock wall with the back corner of the Humvee. Jillybean was thrown back into her seat and pinned there as, for the second time that night, they began to spin.
Sadie started yelling, “Left! Left! Left!” The screens inside the Humvee were useless; everything was topsy turvy and blurred, however Sadie had the iPad to the overhead drone and could see the Humvee as it careened out of control. “Left! Left! Oh, shit!”
Jillybean struggled her belt on just as they were rocked by a crash, but from what direction, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that there was a boom and then she felt the pull of gravity, only now it was coming from a wholly unexpected direction: she was being sucked backwards!
For a long, long second, they were falling. That moment was like falling through the eye of a storm, peaceful but with a sense of impending doom. Then, with an ear-splitting crash, the Humvee hit. Jillybean felt crushed into her seat, unable to breathe.
Then the entire machine tumbled. For a fleeting moment, Jillybean saw her dirty Keds above her head, then she was dangling from her belt and then with a spine jarring thud, she was right side up and yet they were still moving backwards, rattling and shaking and thumping as if the Humvee was about to come apart around them.
After a series of smaller crashes, they finally stopped and yet it was some time before Jillybean’s head came to a complete rest. It felt as though her mind was filled with bingo balls leaping around in the bone cage of her skull. Images came and went: explosions and sinking boats, bodies floating along a mile-wide street, and there were faces of the dead and the sound of bitter laughter echoing down into her mind. The bitterness gave way to the easy laughter of Chris’ and then…
“Jillybean? You okay?”
Like she was waking from a dream, her eyes slowly came into focus. Her sister’s worried face floated in the dark and for just a second she didn’t know whether she was real, or not. “Sadie?”
“Yeah, are you okay?”
Jillybean really had no idea; her body was pretty much numb and when she lifted her hand, she had to give it a long look to make sure it was still attached to her arm. Since it was, she answered, “I think so.”
As she was staring, Steinman pushed open his door, groaning as he did. For some reason, Jillybean expected it to be light out, but it was just as dark as a coal mine outside. “Nice job on those brakes,” Steinman grumbled.
Tell him to go fuck himself, Eve whispered in her ear and used Jillybean’s hand to reach for her .38 police special. Jillybean made a fist to take back control.
“Leave her alone,” Sadie snapped at the soldier. “This isn’t her fault. If you want to blame someone, blame Jimmy. He was the one who screwed up to begin with.” Jimmy, who had been trying to undo his buckle with his left hand, dropped his head and wouldn’t look up.
Steinman gave a grunt and stepped out into the night. A moment later he grunted again, this one containing an attitude of surprise. “I can’t believe we lived through that.” Everyone got out and stared up in disbelief. The road was over a hundred feet above their heads; the Humvee had gone off a cliff—backwards. “And it’s still running.”
Jillybean put a hand out and touched the vehicle. It was dented and rent and dirty and scratched up. The M249 was missing and the roof rack was destroyed. It smelled strongly of diesel and yet, there was a soft vibration coming from it as the engine purred along.
Although the engine was running, there would be no driving it ever again. It was canted at an angle, sitting on a jutting, lichen-covered boulder with its nose pointed slightly upward. Jillybean fished out her maglight and gave the vehicle a glance over. “If it weren’t for the rock its stuck on, we could still drive this sucker,” she said.
“Don’t forget the brakes,” Steinman said. “It’s a little tough to drive without them.”
Eve had some choice words for Steinman which Jillybean bit back. She squatted down and peered up at the undercarriage. The first thing she noticed was that on the interior of the front tires was a spray of what looked like pinkish oil and it was coming from the calipers. “Probably the seals got brokeded,” she mumbled and then turned the light on the patch she had put on the brake line; it still in one piece.
Then say something, Eve demanded. Put that blow hard in his place. Make him feel small. He was the one who suggested the tranny fluid.
“And I was the one who asked for a substitute to begin with,” Jillybean muttered to herself. She stood and after a long sigh, she said: “We should get going.”
“And leave the Humvee?” Sadie asked.
Steinman looked pained when he said: “I
don’t think we have a choice. It’s not coming off this rock and besides, look around. It’s not as if we have a road.” The slope was covered in a forest of pine and where there were gaps in the trees, they were usually filled with more jutting rocks. “Let’s save what can be saved.”
The four of them went at the Humvee, at first looking to salvage everything they could get their hands on until it became obvious that priorities had to be made. There was just too much that was considered valuable: radios, a scanner, fourteen pounds of food, eleven gallons of water, twenty-three gallons of diesel, an eighteen pound medbag, fourteen pounds of tools, a thirty pound car battery, three M4s, four sleeping bags, the remaining drone, three hundred rounds of 5.56 mm rounds, fifteen pipe bombs, a dozen smokers, a stack of maps, and five Bumble Balls.
It was way too much for a hundred and ten pound teenager, a fifty-five pound girl, an injured soldier and one healthy man.
Steinman walked back and forth in front of the gear. “Okay, we can get rid of the sleeping bags, the drone, the radios, the water and the tools.” Jillybean began to protest. He held up a hand. “We can find more. Tools are everywhere, but a charged battery isn’t. They’re very rare.” He didn’t look happy saying this. In fact, he looked a little ill at the idea, probably because he would be the one carrying it.
“Tools are not everywhere around here,” Jillybean insisted waving her hand at the forest. “If I have my tools, I can make electricity. Ask Sadie. Go ahead, ask her.”
Sadie lifted one shoulder. “I’ve never seen her do it, but I would trust her on this. She’s been out on her own more than anyone.”
The sergeant eyed the heavy battery, looking like he wanted to be convinced. He set it aside and agreed to bring most of the tools.
The full contents of the medbag was another story. He allowed her to take one bottle of morphine, another of antibiotics and a stubby one filled with xylocaine, a single bag of normal saline, a suture kit, some bandages, and a few instruments. Jillybean was so beside herself with how little she was being allowed that she immediately called for a vote.
“Since when is this a democracy,” Steinman demanded. “It’s not. I’m the king around here and what I say goes. Idaho Falls is eighty miles away. That’s a four day hump. We need to travel fast and we need to travel light.”
In the end, they did neither. They divided everything as fairly as possible and still their packs were dreadfully heavy. Jillybean carried her medical supplies, a single gallon of diesel, enough food to last her four days, a few tools, her .38, one pipe bomb and a smoker. After twenty minutes of walking her shoulders were stiff and her back hurt where the edge of a can of cream of broccoli soup was digging in.
Four days of this? she wondered, not for a second believing that she’d be able to make it. Yes, she had been on her own quite a bit in the last couple of years, but she had never walked five miles, let alone eighty. She shifted the pack slightly but didn’t offer a word of complaint.
What would be the point of complaining? Complaints were fine back in Estes where life was relatively easy. Back there, complaints served a purpose, .i.e change—the squeaky wheel got the grease; even Jillybean knew that.
Out in the wilderness, a complaint was a waste of breath. No one complained as they trudged down from the mountain. Not even Jimmy, who was leaving a trail of blood drops. His field dressing was soaked through, but Steinman wouldn’t call a halt to their march.
Even after an hour, he said they were still too close to the crash site to stop. Because of the steepness of the land around them, the little group was forced to follow the road on a parallel course. They walked along the bottom of a little ravine that gurgled with a stream. In the dark, the water looked black, like a stream of oil. It made enough noise to cover the sound of their passing.
Steinman’s caution turned out to be well needed. The road was quiet for that first hour, however, after that it became a busy place as vehicles went slowly back and forth with spotlights beaming in every direction, except down in the ravine.
“I think we might have gotten lucky falling off that cliff,” Steinman whispered at one point. Above them they could see the edges of a man-made wall built across the road. “We would have ran up against that and as tough as ol’ Hammering Hank was, I doubt he could have busted through.”
They went on tip-toe, trying to hold in their ragged breathing—and their curses as a couple of men took the moment of their passing to relieve themselves. It wasn’t a completely vertical drop, and there were plenty of trees to catch the urine, still it was an ugly feeling.
Sadie put her back to one of the pine trees and just sat there shaking her head, looking miserable until the two buttoned their flies and wandered back.
After this little incident, they made much faster progress. The patrols ended at the wall and by three in the morning they were out of the mountains and only a mile from Lake Yellowstone. By then everyone was exhausted. “We gotta stop dragging ass, people,” Steinman said. He had one hand planted on the trunk of a pine and couldn’t seem to hold his head fully erect. His pack was the heaviest by far; he had been walking with a pendulum-like swing for the last mile.
By “people” he meant Jimmy, who had tried to sit on a rock outcropping, but had misjudged where the edge was and had ended up on the ground, moaning.
“You want me to look at him?” Jillybean asked. “He lost a lots of blood, you know and that’s what means he could die if we’re not careful.” She was already trying to get her pack off her back, however it felt as though the straps had dug so far into her flesh that the pack had melded into her.
“Not yet,” Steinman said. “You’d need light to see by. We can’t risk it. You’ll have to wait until sunrise. You can press on that long, can’t you, Jimmy?” He groaned something that might have been a yes. Steinman allowed them five minutes to rest and drink from the mountain stream, and then they were off again, trying to put miles between them and the bad guys, if they were even bad guys.
There was no way to tell if they were truly bad or not. Perhaps they had just been protecting their borders from another group. Perhaps they had stumbled across a war. It wouldn’t be the first time for Jillybean. Maybe they were peaceful, but had been afraid; the Humvee had been a scary looking vehicle—she missed it already.
It felt like an age went by before the sun finally began to pink up the sky beyond the mountains in the east. Blearily, Jillybean turned to face the light. She didn’t have the strength to smile, though she couldn’t remember a more welcome sunrise.
“Not yet,” Steinman mumbled. “We’re too out in the open here. Let’s get over that next hill.” There always seemed to be a “next” hill, but eventually they crested one that overlooked a dense forest canopy. At the bottom the sergeant pulled off his pack. “This’ll do. Jillybean if you want to take a look at Jimmy, now’s the time. I want us back up and moving in three hours. We’ll make better time traveling in the day.”
Jillybean yawned, feeling slow and sleepy…and a little bit confused. “I can look at Mister Jimmy, but I won’t be able to help him at all. Not here, especially after we left behind all my stuff.”
“What’s wrong with this place?” Steinman asked rubbing his face with both hands. He looked so tired, he almost seemed drunk. “You got cover. You got wood for a fire. There was even another stream back there. It’s perfect.”
She tried to smile up at him without looking superior, something Sadie had mentioned she did on occasion. “It is perfect and I will need water to clean the wound, but I also kinda need something to put the water in. It’s got to boil you know or it’ll be dirty and his wound will get infected and that what means it’ll…”
“I know what an infection is,” Steinman cranked, “but I don’t see a pot lying around here anywhere, so we’re going to have to make the best of it. Adapt and overcome, that’s what Captain Grey would say. You can use the juice in the IV. I bet it’s sterile.”
Jillybean was about to explain the c
oncept of emergencies to Steinman, something he clearly didn’t understand, when Jimmy said, “We can wait. It doesn’t really hurt so much anymore and I’m too tired to care. I just want to sleep. Besides, infection won’t happen for a few more days.”
“Actually, it’s happening right now,” she explained. “The moment you got shotted you were infected by germs. Germs is what means…”
Sadie, who was leaning against the same tree as Jillybean, put her hand on the little girl’s arm. “We all know the dangers of germs and infections, but we have antibiotics, right? He should be fine for a little while longer. The map showed a place north of us called Canyon City, or something like that. It should have a hospital or a clinic or something.”
“It’s Canyon Village,” Steinman said, pulling out a folded map and looking at it with red-rimmed eyes. “And I don’t think we should go anywhere near it. It’s pretty much the only town on the map. If whoever those guys were are still after us, it would be smart to put an observer or even a platoon there. I say we patch Jimmy up with what we have and replenish our stocks in Idaho Falls.”
“Anything to lighten the load,” Sadie said, agreeing with Steinman. She wiggled the pack off her back, moaned in a way that was part exhaustion and part pleasure at being rid of the weight, and pulled out the lone IV bag. “Let’s make it work.”
The bag was thrust into Jillybean’s hands, meaning the decision had been made. Jillybean was too tired to protest. “Fine, I guess. Mister Jimmy, I’m gonna need that arm.” She positioned him on the forest floor with his right arm up on a wide shelf of rock. Around it, she arrayed her tools: clamps, xylocaine, syringe, suture kit, and the remainder of their bandages.
The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice Page 3