“There might be a simpler way to see out,” he said. “You could cut a hole in the metal.”
“Huh,” Sadie said. “Thanks.” It was unlike Jillybean to miss something so obvious. Happy to be doing something that would guarantee results, she went right to work. Using the torch, she cut away an 8 x 2 inch hunk of metal from directly in front of the driver’s seat.
She squeezed herself into the car, got behind the wheel, and immediately saw why Jillybean had wanted a different solution. The view was terrible. In fact, she really couldn’t tell what she was looking at unless she leaned far over the wheel and put her face to the slot.
“Oh boy,” she said as she sat back, turning her head this way and that, squinting through the gap she had made. “Maybe it’ll just take practice.”
“Or you can make the hole bigger,” Rachael suggested.
Making the hole too much larger could have dangerous consequences. “But so would running off a cliff,” Sadie reasoned under her breath. She decided to enlarge the hole by another two inches. It helped a little. Next, she cut a hole in front of the passenger seat and out both side “windows.” The views out of each weren’t great, but they would suffice—she hoped.
On that Monday morning when Jillybean saw the altered Camry, her mouth came open and then just sort of hung there until she said: “Uhhhhh, I guess since Miss Rachael said I shouldn’t say anything unless it was nice, I will say that…that…it looks real protective and…uh, do the wheels turn?”
“Yeah, of course.” Sadie squatted down and only then saw that she was wrong.
“And how do we see out the back?” Jillybean asked. She went around the Camry and saw the jumble of PVC pipes and the broken mirrors. “And what…are those the periscopes? Why did you use schedule 80s? You were supposed to use 40s and those are schedule 80s, didn’t that throw everything off?”
Sadie looked back and forth from the pipes and the wheels and the slab of metal that sat over the rear window. “Schedule 80s?” was all she could think to say.
“Yeah, right there. It says 80.” She pointed to the side of one of the pipes where in blue lettering there was indeed the number 80. But it wasn’t the only number.
“Well, it also says: 480PSI@73F*ASTM OD5.63 ID5.13. Am I supposed to know what all that means, too?” When Jillybean opened her mouth again, Sadie snapped: “Don’t answer that!”
“This is my fault,” Jillybean said. “I shoulda helped you but I just got all wrapped up with…”
Sadie put an arm around her shoulders. “You were too wrapped up with being a kid. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I guess, but I shoulda knowd that you haven’t ever worked with PVC before. It’s really kinda simple. The numbers at the end represent the exterior and the interior diameters of the pipe. Diameter is what means the width…” She stopped, seeing Sadie’s glare. “Right, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that stuff. Anyways, these loopholes are a smart idea. Simple can be good.”
Simple was good, except when it turned from simple to simpleton which Sadie felt like as she glanced again at the tires. They were perfect if straight was the only direction that they would have to travel. Jillybean went right for the welding machine. “That fix will be easy as pie,” she said, strapping on the gear.
The leather apron looked to weigh nearly as much as she did, and the heavy welder’s mask hung far down her chin and the gloves went to her elbows. With her knees jutting out on either side, she looked like a catcher on some sort of intergalactic baseball team where they threw fireballs instead of fastballs.
She also looked cute as a button and seeing her like that made Sadie’s heart swell. Jillybean didn’t know what she looked like and probably wouldn’t have cared, at least not just then; she was all business and in no time she cut away the metal from the tries. She had Sadie cant them as far over as possible. Then, using the scraps from the trash, she welded layered strips of metal at three points on the armor around the tires, and to these she added the arc of metal she had just cut away.
“It’s not pretty, but now the wheels can turn,” she said as she lugged the welding equipment to the back of the car. Squatting on the trunk, she cut out a small rectangle from the rear armor that matched the ones Sadie had used in front and on the sides.
As she was working, Corina and Anita came into the garage. They stood there staring in amazement as sparks flew everywhere, bathing Jillybean in them. It was a few seconds before Sadie remembered they weren’t supposed to stare directly at the white-hot arc. She turned them away to face the wall and had to hold Anita in place.
“That was so cool!” Corina said, when Jillybean shut off the gas. “I didn’t know you can work one of these things. What is it, a laser?”
“No, it’s an oxy-fuel welder. It can melt or cut metal. It’s pretty cool except it gets super hot.” The sweat running down her face was proof of this.
Anita pressed forward, grinning widely, the gap in her teeth showing in her excitement. “What else can it melt? Like a refrigerator? Can I get a turn on it?”
Sadie pulled her back just as she was about to pick up a piece of metal that had been glowing orange just a few seconds before. “No, sorry. Everyone out. Come on.”
“You can watch me build some smoke bombs,” Jillybean said. The girls cheered and ran out of the garage in a patter of feet, leaving Sadie to clean up the discarded gloves and mask. By the time she walked back into the house, Jillybean had her ingredients spread out on the kitchen table. Although it seemed that school, playing, socializing, and exploring had taken up all of her time, Jillybean had managed to accumulate many, many items, including everything she needed for smoke bombs.
“What are you making?” Rachael asked, eyeing the ingredients, nervously. “I heard the word bomb.”
Jillybean laughed: “It’s not a bomb-bomb, it’s a smoke bomb, though I don’t know why they call it that. It doesn’t blow up or nothing.” She sounded disappointed.
“How do you make any kind of bomb with this stuff?” Corina asked. “Ground up old corn and baking soda? Aluminum foil? What’s that white stuff? Is that what makes it go?”
“Go? It doesn’t really go, it just smokes, like this: Fffffshh. And that white stuff is potassium nitrate. You shoulda knowd that. Like every farm around here gots some. Mister Naismith gave me it.”
The two girls looked at each other excitedly. Rachael frowned, lines showing across her otherwise smooth forehead. “Corina Julian, don’t even think about bothering Mister Naismith for any of this stuff. And you, Anita, I’ll be warning your mother about this. In fact, it probably isn’t right of me to let you watch this without her permission.”
“Not fair,” Anita mumbled, sticking out her lower lip and walking slowly to the door. “Jillybean gets to do all sorts of cool stuff like blowing up bridges and driving boats an all.”
And look where it’s gotten her, Sadie thought. Riding the crazy train.
Jillybean talked her way through the building of five smoke bombs, each the size of a pineapple. Corina begged for a demonstration, however there wasn’t enough left over ingredients and even if there had been, her mother drew the line.
When she was done, they thought they were going to have one last meal with the Woods family but it was not to be. Dinner was a town-sized event held in the church parking lot. Four lambs were prepared along with mounds of chicken, heaps of potato salad, biscuits and real honey that was harvested from one of the many hives that dotted the dale.
Gifts were given. Really, an over-abundance of gifts were showered on the two. Every family in the town came with something: food, clothes, maps, ammo for Jillybean’s .38 which had been cleaned and returned. They also received a shotgun and eight shells, ten gallons of gas, twelve batteries, four each of Ds, Cs, and AAs. Doctor Danahy came last with a small piece of luggage, which was stuffed with medical supplies.
Both Jillybean and Sadie were in tears by the end and could only mutter thank you after thank you. Once the gifts
were given, Father Amacker gave a long prayer in which he ended: “Truly I tell you that whatever you did for the least of my brothers, you did for me. Remember this generosity for every gift that is given is a gift to God as well.”
Then came a long line of hugs and handshakes and good byes. The last in line were the Woods family and Anita. The gap-toothed girl ran in circles around Jillybean and Corina, who walked back down to the house holding hands. With each orbit around the two, Anita would reach out and poke Jillybean squealing: “Got you!”
This last goodbye was even more painful than the rest and Sadie didn’t let it drag out, fearing that if she let it go on too long that not only would Jillybean change her mind about leaving, Sadie would as well.
Jillybean was still in tears when Rachael Woods gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Be careful out there and come back and see us.”
“I will,” she promised. “And I’ll bring gifts, too. Even one for Father Amacker. I think he needs glasses, cuz he called us brothers, but we’re girls. I got long hair and that’s what means I’m a girl.”
Chapter 18
Jillybean
The two were quiet during the first part of the night as they drove. They spoke when they needed to but otherwise kept their thoughts to themselves. For her part, Jillybean was busy trying to think up a way to defend the gentle dale from the many enemies that surrounded it. This was a far better alternative to dwelling on the miserable fact that she was already missing her friends and wanted to go back.
She forced her mind away from Corina and her sweet smile and Anita and the devil may care look she always had brewing in her eyes. She stuck to the problem of defending what probably couldn’t be defended. Walls were out of the question. On such a scale, it would take too much time and use up materials that they would have to haul in using gas and equipment they didn’t have. Fences were lighter and easier to put into position. Where the land was flat they would have to rely on multiple layers of fencing and maybe even moats. They would also need cameras with low light capabilities to watch over the miles of fences. Of course this would require electricity. The river would supply that…theoretically.
She knew how to generate electricity on a small scale; it was on a large scale where things started to get vague and scary. It’s where a mistake could get someone killed. “And then there’s the question of magnets,” she muttered. “How big do they have to be?”
Sadie had been driving, leaning well into the steering wheel so she could see through the little cutout in the armor. She glanced over at Jillybean when she heard the mumble. Her eyes went to the doll in Jillybean’s hands. It was a Barbie from Corina’s “personal collection” is how she put it.
“You doing okay? You take your pill?”
Jillybean understood the fear. The last time Jillybean had a doll, at least one that Sadie knew about, had housed the evil Eve. This one was just plastic with blonde nylon hair; there was nothing in her and nor had there been anything in the dolls she had collected back at Granny Annie’s house.
“Yeah, I tookted it already. I miss everyone already. That’s what I don’t like about Estes, there’s no kids except me and Emily, and she is just a baby. I like her and all but it’s hard to play with her.”
“You know I’ll take you right back if you wish.”
As much as she wanted that, Jillybean shook her head. “You said we’d always be together. That’s sorta like a promise. Besides, we’re nearly there.”
“We’re not nearly anywhere,” Sadie shot back. “It’s gonna be three days to get to Seattle, but there’s no telling if there will be anyone there. If not we’re going to have to go all the way to Eugene and maybe even further. And then there’s the trek back. We have to find a safe way, remember?”
She knew. Setting aside the plans for the town of Colton she’d been drawing up in her mind, she brought out the Rand McNally road map and searched for an alternate route through Yellowstone. That was where they’d had their one big problem. If they had avoided it, Sergeant Steinman would still be alive and Jimmy would still be with them…but would they have ever found Colton? Probably not. Steinman would never have driven the Suburban or Hank the Humvee into a river without knowing its depths.
Then again, it wasn’t like her to do such a thing either. And if she hadn’t, then they would have never met all those sweet people. “Do you believe in fate?” she asked Sadie. “Fate is what means there’s no stopping things, right?”
Sadie drove for a while in silence, her foot resting gently on the brake—they were driving blind at night as usual. “I don’t know about fate,” she said, giving Jillybean a searching look. “I believe in Death and I believe he can’t be denied. When Ram died, Death came for one: Ram or Neil and he took Ram, but there was a choice. And when he came for you, Sarah died in your place.”
“And Ipes,” Jillybean croaked in a whisper. “He died for me twice. You mean like that, right?”
“Yeah, just like…that.” Her voice had cracked and her dark eyes were wet, brimming with tears.
“Who else?” Jillybean asked.
Sadie wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “There are a lot. Mary Gates died so Grey could live and…and there was this boy named Morganstern. You didn’t know him. He died for me, I think. He was very brave.”
“Was he cute?”
Suddenly the tears were back, but Sadie laughed through them. “Yes, he was very cute. He was tall and strong and…he was sort of like if Corina had an older brother. They had those same sort of apple cheeks.” Sadie went on, telling her about the young soldier. Then the two of them played remember when for the rest of the night, always trying to stay on the positive, keeping well clear of the dead.
Tears of laughter were in Sadie’s eyes when she told the story of Neil dressing as a gay cowboy to get past the gate guards on the River King’s base. Jillybean wanted to tell Sadie about Chris and his zest for life and the way he found so much of what went on around him funny, but he was neither dead or alive and she didn’t think it was appropriate just then.
She might have been able to tell Sadie that she hadn’t heard a thing from Chris or Ipes or anyone in days. Sadie would have thought that was good news and in a way it was, however in another way, it was like putting a blanket over her own fond memories. Chris and Ipes had been her friends when she had no one else. If she could have taken a pill that had just gotten rid of Eve and the awful scary voices, but kept Chris and Ipes she would have.
“Tell me more about Morganstern,” Jillybean asked. She had been slipping into a tired state of depression and she didn’t like it. “I mean, would you have married him and had babies?”
Sadie shrugged. “I guess. Maybe. I don’t know.” The question had so flummoxed her that she was doing more daydreaming than driving. Luckily, they were entering a land that seemed empty of anything even remotely human. For the next few hours, they drove through beautiful but rugged mountains and in all that time they didn’t see even a zombie.
It was a little too empty. By sunrise they were searching hard for a place to sleep. The Camry was too small and cramped for them to want to sleep in. Besides, they were both close to bursting with the need to find a proper bathroom. For an hour, they drove as the sun crept up, seeing nothing but the winding little road they had been on.
They were both pressed up towards the little cutouts in the armor when Jillybean saw a sign. “That said ‘Private Property!’ I think there was a road.” It was a struggle to back up the Camry using the rectangle of a window and Sadie nearly reversed them right off the road.
Although Ipes would have made a joke at Sadie’s expense, Jillybean knew better. She tried to look on the bright side of having the rear tires half way over a steep drop. “You can see the road better like this. It’s not much, but it’s got to lead to somewhere.”
The road led to a fork which led to another fork and then another, all of which were single lane dirt paths. Sadie simplified things by only taking left hand turns. T
he lefts went up over the mountain they had been skirting. From the ridge peak they saw a rising and falling ocean of green.
“That’s it,” Sadie said, “I gotta pee. The dam is this close to bursting.” She grabbed the toilet paper from the back seat and disappeared in the forest. Jillybean waited for her turn and when Sadie got back, the little girl went in the opposite direction and found a downed log. Sitting down with her privates jutting over the back end of the log, she urinated for a good minute, groaning as she did.
Getting up she went to the next downed tree and stood on tiptoe, hoping against hope of spotting a little cabin down in the vale below her. There wasn’t a house, but there was a smudge of light brown seen through the trees. Carefully, she walked down the trunk. There were soft spots along her path where age, decay and termites had rotted the wood, but it held her weight.
Now, she had a better view; it wasn’t much. The land far below had been cleared of trees and was exposed to the elements. It hadn’t been loggers since she could see where the trunks were piled in great unkempt masses. And there were mounds of dirt and rock here and there. “A landfill? Naw, we’re too far away from anything. A mine?” That was a possibility that held little in the way of excitement for her.
When she got back to the Camry, Sadie was leaning in the doorway, staring at the dash. “We got a bit of a problem. This stupid car is gobbling up gas faster than it should. It had a full tank when we started. That should have got us to Seattle, easily.”
“How much do we have…”
“A quarter tank.”
That was a shock. Jillybean went to check for herself. “The engine is overheating, too, for all darn it.” She popped the hood, however with the weight of the armor, she couldn’t lift it. Sadie got it up and the two stared in for a moment before Jillybean reached for the oil dipstick, which turned out to be at a good level. Next she checked the radiator fluid and that too was normal.
The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice Page 19