“Why the hell would you want to blow up the fuel?” Baloo asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. You,” he said, pointing at Sadie, “can you tell her not to blow anything up and maybe not shoot us, either.”
Before Sadie could say anything, one way or the other, Jillybean said: “I don’t want to shoot anyone, but Eve does. She wants to shoot someone real bad.”
Suddenly, Sadie felt as though the real bomb wasn’t attached to some runoff valve, it was right there in the room. “Is that the same Eve from before?” she asked, careful to keep her voice calm as possible.
One of Jillybean’s eyes swiveled chameleon-like toward Sadie as she answered, “Yes, she says she wants vengeance on them guys for hurting you, but I don’t think that’s true. I think she just wants to kill these people. She likes that. It makes us feel strong, like we can do anything and we don’t have to be afraid.”
“Can you control her?” The ultimate question. If Eve could get loose within Jillybean, there was a good chance that they were only minutes from a blood bath. “Can you tell her that we need hostages not corpses. Can you tell her that for me?”
Jillybean shook her head. “She can hear you, but doesn’t care. And I can only control her for a little bit. She’s strong and doesn’t want to go back. When I tried, I couldn’t. It was like trying to wrestle an octopus into a soda can.”
“What’s going on?” Baloo asked.
“Shh!” Sadie hissed. “If you want to live, shut up.” She glared him into silence and then assured Jillybean: “It’s going to be okay. You’re just stressed. You’re afraid for me, but now I’m safe. La-La, cut me free and don’t do anything stupid. She’ll shoot you and not even blink.”
La-La’s hand shook as she slowly reached into her pocket for a little folding knife. She went down to one knee, not noticing that she was kneeling in Sadie’s vomit. “Are you Jillybean?” she asked, glancing back for a flash before she began to saw at the twine. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wanna, but there are stories of a little girl who…does things. You know who blows stuff up and rescues people. That sort of thing.”
It seemed like the sort of question that would bring Eve right out, however it had the opposite effect. It was almost as if the name “Jillybean” had sent Eve scurrying back into the dark. But it wasn’t all good news. Both of Jillybean’s eyes snapped right to Sadie’s face and the fear in them couldn’t be more obvious. They had been hoping to ditch the name Jillybean but even out in the middle of this empty wilderness, a thousand miles from anything, the stories had spread.
“No,” Sadie said, quickly. “She’s not real. Jillybean is just a myth or a rumor. Now cut me free, damn it.”
“Either way, we don’t use names here,” Baloo said. “You know the rules, La-La. Now, uh, little girl, we don’t really care where you’re from, or who you are. We just don’t want anyone to get hurt. So be careful with that gun.”
Sadie groaned as she tried to get to her feet. Her shins ached so badly that she couldn’t stand without trusting most of her weight to the rickety, broken-backed chair. “You don’t want anyone to get hurt? That’s funny, Baloo because I’m hurting pretty bad right now. What do you have to say about that?”
“Hey, wait,” Baggy Pants said, interrupting. “Is someone attacking us or what? What the hell’s going on?”
Baloo was standing in the flickering light of the three candles, blinking slowly as something dawned on him. “No, it was just her. I think we made a mistake.”
A harsh bark of laughter escaped Sadie. Her fear was draining away, leaving a hangover of bitter anger in its place. “Ha! Beating me with a bat is what you call a ‘mistake?’ You know what? It might be more of a mistake than you realize.” She took Baggy Pants’s pistol and then backed to Jillybean, limping as she went. “Why don’t you give me the detonator?” she asked the little girl.
“But Chris wants to blow up the fuel depot,” Jillybean whispered. “He’s like real keen on it. Do you think we can? It’ll be awful cool.”
“No, we need it as our ace in the hole to get out of here. Okay? Can you give it to me, please?” The hand twitched once and then slowly lifted. It was even slower to open. “Alright, good. Now, all of you get on the ground, face down with your hands behind your back.”
Mad Jenny and La-La were quick to drop down. The two men, however were slower. Baloo had calculations clicking along in his eyes, while Baggy Pants held fear. He clearly didn’t want to put himself in such a vulnerable position after what he had done. “The bat wasn’t my idea. It was Baloo. He did it. He made me.”
Sadie’s dark eyes flashed and the anger began to pulse in her head. “So you’re saying that I shouldn’t be mad because you were just being a good little Nazi and following orders? Well, that’s not going to cut it as an excuse. At a minimum, you’re going to get a taste of the bat. If I was you I would consider praying and begging for mercy.”
“Can I beg for mercy for him,” Baloo asked. “He’s right. I’m the leader here. I brought him here knowing full well what would happen. His punishment should be my punishment.”
It infuriated her even more that they wanted to be suddenly civilized as if the chair and the burning twine and the vomit weren’t sitting out like exhibits in their trial. Furious, she advanced on Baloo with the pistol pointed and her finger pulling back on the trigger. She was prepared to shoot him, however Jillybean stopped her by asking: “Can Eve kill him. She promises to go back if I let her kill him.”
This smothered the fire in Sadie. “No, sorry. You can fight her, Jil…I mean just hold on for a few minutes.” It didn’t appear that the little girl could. Although her eyes were centered, they twitched in a dreadful manner. This was also Baloo’s fault, however Sadie’s anger didn’t come surging back; she didn’t let it.
To save Jillybean from herself, she needed to de-escalate the situation as fast as she could. “La-La, get the twine and tie everyone up. And if I don’t see the twine cutting into their flesh, I’m going to take it out on you. Baggy, if you want mercy, I need you to start talking: where’s the closest vehicle? I’m talking a Jeep or a hummer or a Range Rover.”
“In the garage,” he spat out as quick as he could. “Right upstairs. It’s a Suburban, but if that won’t do, we also have a couple of Jeeps parked over by the wall.”
“The Suburban is fully loaded,” Baloo added. “The keys are in it and it’s all gassed up. Take it if you want to. There’s food upstairs, also; enough for days.”
Sadie suddenly felt her anger spike. She had to count to ten before she could trust herself to speak and not yell. “Wow, your generosity is sooo overwhelming that I might just forget what you did to me. Maybe if you hadn’t started in with the…” Wrinkles on the radio asking for guidance cut her off. She listened for a moment and then told Baloo: “Have them hold in place.”
She held the radio to his face and thumbed the talk button. “Have everyone hold their positions while we interrogate the girl,” he said. Before Sadie could take the radio away, he continued: “This might have been a mistake, so try to calm everyone down.”
Sadie yanked the radio away. “Look, Baloo, I’m not buying the goody-two-shoe act, so you can cut it out.” She turned to Jillybean and nearly blurted out her name again, “Jil…” She stopped in mid-word, grimaced and started over. “Sweetie, we don’t have a lot of time. Can you go check out the Suburban? Can you handle that?”
“Yeah, I think so now that Chris is gone.” Although her lips were still a little crooked and the gun still held in a stiff grip, her eyes were clear blue and the twitches were fading into nothing. “You shouldn’t be mad at him. He likes bombs, but he’s actually real nice and just wants to have fun.”
“I’m not mad, just get going.” When Jillybean had slipped away. The room grew tense. “Lie down, La-La,” Sadie ordered and then hobbled to each person to check the tightness of the twine. La-La had done such a good job that Mad Jenny was practically crying. Sadie wanted to feel sorr
y for her but bit it back.
Keeping a sharp eye on the others, Sadie tied up La-La and then went to the bat and picked it up and went to stand over Baggy Pants, who watched her with one glaring eye. Baloo shook his head, sweeping the dusty floor with his shaggy hair. “Don’t do it,” he ordered. “You’re not safe, yet, are you? If you give in to revenge and the tables get turned, what do you think will happen? What do you think Baggy will do?”
“If he’s dead, he won’t do anything, will he?” Sadie shot back. “I’m sorry but I’ve seen too much of this crap. I’ve seen too many bastards just like this guy. You wanted him, Baloo because you knew what he would do. You knew what kind of monster he is. Whatever else happens, I think the world would be better without him in it. He’s a perversion.”
Sadie shoved the pistol down the back of her pants and took the bat in both hands. She didn’t want to have to kill Baggy Pants, but knew in her heart that it was the right thing—he’d been just too quick to swing that bat himself. “Live by the bat,” she said and hoisted the hunk of wood. “Die by the bat.”
“He’s not a perversion,” Mad Jenny said in a squeaky little voice. Sadie paused with the bat held high. “He was bad, that’s true. He was a slaver like a lot of men. But he saved me. He risked his life to save me and some other women, and he didn’t ask anything for anything in return, like favors or none of that. So, you’re wrong. He’s not a perversion. He’s just a hard man doing what he has to.”
“And you think that he had to beat me with that bat?” Sadie demanded, raising her voice. “Huh? You think he really had to? Is that what you want me to believe?”
Baloo answered with a quick: “Yes. And I had to order him to do it. If you and that girl are really alone and you were just poking about to see what kind of people we are, well I’m sorry about what happened. But you would be the first truly innocent people to come along since we walled off this little valley. All we get are bands of slavers coming through here, always looking to kill and rape and steal. You can hit us with that bat all you want, but it won’t change the fact that you came here in the dark of night just like a hundred slavers before you.”
Sadie’s fists turned white on the bat for a moment before she growled and tossed it aside. She had to admit to herself that Neil would have done the same thing and she probably would have been cheering him on. Right and wrong were no longer so easy to define as they used to be. It had become terribly subjective.
And she had to think how Jillybean would take it if she came down to see a man’s head dashed in and Sadie holding the murder weapon. “Fine, maybe you’re right,” she said through gritted teeth. She still wanted to grind her heel into his eye. She turned away and gave a little jump.
Jillybean was on the stairs watching her. She had moved through the house so silently that for a moment Sadie had the peculiar sensation that she was a ghost. “Uh, is there really a car in the garage?”
The little girl nodded. “Yessum, but we can’t stay too much longer. There’s a time limit to these sorts of things. Like a clock. You keep it in your head. Are you gonna take one of them?”
“She’s going to take me,” Baloo said. “I’m the leader. I can get you through the gate.”
Sadie didn’t like how quickly he had volunteered. Was it a trick? Did he know something about the Suburban that they didn’t? Perhaps it had a tracking device on it, or maybe it had a bad belt and would break down after only so many miles. But did they have time to get a new vehicle? Jillybean was right about the lack of time. The valley was small, too small to try anything fancy. They had hostages and a vehicle. It would get them to safety.
“We’ll take Baloo and La-La,” Sadie said. “And Baggy, you better believe it that I will kill them if I have to.”
With Sadie barely able to stand, it took some doing to get their hostages on their feet and moving. Jillybean went first, stalking through the candle-lit house like a cat. She directed them to the garage, stopping in the kitchen long enough to stare around as if she had heard something when in fact she had noticed crumbs.
“Bread crumbs,” she whispered as if the little specks were made of diamonds instead of ground wheat. Like a blood hound hot on the trail, she went directly for a drawer beside the sink. “Holy-moly. Can I have some of this?” From a bag, she pulled a roundish lump the size of her head. One end of it had been cut off and was flat and white.
“I think it’ll be all right,” Sadie said, giving Baloo a look, daring him to say anything. Wisely, he kept silent. Against all hope, Jillybean then went to the refrigerator. She glanced in and the face she made, as if she had just sniffed a rotting corpse, told Sadie that it wasn’t working.
“I was hoping for some butter. That would be the dream, right, Sadie.” Jillybean didn’t notice the accidental drop of the name. On the other hand, Sadie heard it as though it had been broadcast to the world. She glanced at Baloo, whose eyes had widened. He quickly dropped his chin.
He had to have heard, but had the name meant anything to him? And did it really matter? Mad Jenny had picked Jillybean out of a one girl lineup and most people who knew Jillybean knew who she traveled with. There was no getting that cat back in the bag, there was only clearing out of there as fast as they could.
The bread disappeared beneath Jillybean’s ghillie suit as she headed into the garage, where she stood just to the side of an immense green SUV that took up the entire garage. She had a faraway look which Sadie always took to be her “thinkings” look. “Mister Baloo will have to drive,” Jillybean announced. “And Miss La-La will be in the back with me. He will call on the radio to open the gate…but why? Why would he?”
They all understood the question. What would be urgent enough to get Baloo to open the gate in the middle of what had begun as an attack? What excuse would be believed?
“You could say that someone with you guys is pregnant,” La-La offered. “Like they had begun to have the kid out there in the woods. Everyone likes babies, you know.”
As much as she was into babies, Jillybean was unconvinced. “I don’t know if that would work. Is Mister Baloo your resident medical specialist?” she asked. He shook his head. “That’s what I thought. And either way, we need something more urgent to you guys, not to us.”
“What’s wrong with just saying they’re our hostages?” Sadie asked. “It should work just fine…unless your people don’t really like you, Baloo.”
“They love him,” La-La stated as if it was a fact that shouldn’t have been questioned. “His people would do anything for him.”
That sounded a little too much like the Believers of New Eden, one of whom had happily jumped on a grenade for their false prophet. That sort of cult worship was frightening. “They might love him too much for our needs. We need something else.”
A second later, Jillybean snapped her fingers, her face lighting up. “I got it. The buffaloes! A little while ago, Chris said we coulda gotted one of the babies with all of the hubbabaloo going on. He thought it would be a good idea to, you know to raise it for cheese and milk. That’s what we can say the smoke was for. It was a distraction to keep you guys here while bad guys were going after the buffaloes, you know shooting them and stuff.”
Baloo considered this, managing to look calmly thoughtful even with both of his arms tied behind his back. “It might work. I’ll say that there’s only a few of you and that one truck might scare you off.”
The plan was as sound as any and Sadie agreed to it quickly. Before cutting the two hostages free, she searched both of them and the Suburban. Once they were free, she was extra twitchy and true to her training under Captain Grey, she kept her pistol tucked in close to her chest. Baloo might have been a big man and slow on his feet, but that didn’t mean he had a dull mind or slow reactions. She was sure he would be looking for any lapse in concentration or vigilance on her part.
Once they were all in the SUV, she handed over the radio, saying: “No funny business.”
“I just want to get this ov
er with,” he replied. True to his word, he stayed on point and if there were any hidden messages, they were so subtle or arcane that all the vigilance in the world wouldn’t have helped.
“Hey, Jonny Jam are you on the wall tonight? This is Baloo, over.”
A moment of crackling and then: “Yeah, this is me. What the hell’s going on, do you know? We getting attacked?”
“I don’t think so. The smoke was just a diversion. Supposedly we got some poachers going after the herd. Open up the gate, will you? Me and some…a crew are going to check it out real quick. While I’m gone, keep the place buttoned up tight, got it?”
It wasn’t ten seconds later that the night air was disturbed by the squealing of metal on metal. The radio crackled some more, this time it was Wrinkle panicking. “What the hell? What the hell? Someone tell me what the hell’s going on.”
“Calm yourself, Wrinkle. I just found out that we might have some poachers going after the herd. There’s just a few of them. Me and Baggy are going to run them off. To be on the safe side, I want everyone to hold still for a bit longer.”
Baloo had a low, gravelly voice that exuded calm and Wrinkle gave a: “Ten-four,” and just like that, suspicions were allayed, panic was forgotten and the four of them buzzed through the gate. They were, to Sadie’s great amazement and joy, free.
Chapter 10
Jillybean
Holding the gun had bothered Jillybean. It was like touching the posts of a battery. Not one fully charged, but one with just enough juice in it to send an unpleasant zing through her nerves, along her bones, and deep into her where the dark things lurked.
The gun was heavy and felt evil as though it hadn’t been made of metal, but of sins, millions of sins compressed and formed into the perfect shape to make murder. It was the same gun she had used to execute the Colonel and his three men, and the River King and the man who had shot Ipes…
The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice Page 10