When she could find the breath, she said, “They wouldn’t even let me in the gate. They ignored me. Can you believe that crap? I asked to see the counsel and they were like ‘we’ll see.’ Son of a bitch.” The explanation stole the last of her energy and she had to settle herself back down onto the bed.
“I’ll go,” Jillybean said. She glanced down at her drawing and muttered, “They won’t ignore me. That’s for certain.” Sadie grumbled and swore some more and told her not to go, but they needed gas.
And they got it.
The little girl pulled up as close to the gate as she dared and when she got out, she held one of the big bombs. At first it wasn’t obvious what it was. At the gate was a tower that had been constructed of wooden pallets. It looked dreadfully unstable, however it didn’t so much as vibrate as a man climbed down to talk to her.
“Hey there,” he said. He had eyes that seemed stuck in a perpetual squint. She could see so little of them that she couldn’t tell what color they were, and she had to wonder how he managed to see out of them. He knew her, though she couldn’t remember meeting him before. “Jillybean, I don’t think it’s a good idea you com…”
It was then that he saw the bomb. “What the hell is that?” he asked, pulling off his trucker cap and rubbing his receding hairline with the back of his hand.
Always literal minded she answered, “It’s a bomb.”
“No shit, it’s a bomb. Why do you have it? Are you planning something, you know, a little nutty?”
“I want to make a trade for it. We need gas and you need better defenses.” That was very much of an understatement. The perimeter had only the single fence and a dozen or so of the towers. She saw that they had adopted a zevac light system similar to the one Neil had set up in Estes. It would take care of a monster army if it wasn’t being controlled by an outside force.
A real army would shred the place up.
“A trade?” He squinted harder at the bomb. “I’d ask if that thing works but if you made it, I bet we can trust it. Wait here, I’ll go see if the trade-meister is available.” He started to walk toward the hospital and then paused, looking back. “Do you know what sort of yield that will produce?”
She knew the term, but didn’t know the answer. “A lot? Probably more than two hand-grenade’s worth. You can take it apart if you wanna, if that’s too much.”
He grunted and shrugged. “You got more of those?”
“Maybe.” She wasn’t the best negotiator, but she knew some things. She knew not to give away too much information or to be too eager. That was just logic.
The trade-meister, an odd name to Jillybean, was a sharp-faced man who had a bird-like way in which he approached Jillybean and her bomb. He would turn his head this way and that, never looking straight down his tall feather of a nose. His name was Carl and she had met him a number of times in the past, including once in her clinic. He had been there to take an inventory of what she had thought of as “her” supplies.
“Could you put that down, please? It’s making me nervous. I’m sure you understand.”
“Sure thing,” she said, and with slow moves, she laid the bomb down and stepped back. Carl gave it three different sideways looks and then shrugged.
“Okay, it’s a bomb. A single bomb. It’s not worth all that much if you ask me. I’d say two, maybe three gallons of gas.”
“Two bombs for eight gallons,” Jillybean countered. She was getting screwed on the price, but she was the one in need and they both knew it.
Carl made a show, squinching up his face as if what she had said had actually pained him. “Ooooh, I don’t know. That’s a lot. I might be able to do six.”
“Eight.”
He shook his head like any adult would to a little girl who didn’t know what she was talking about. “Seven, maybe. I don’t know. I just…don’t…know.”
“Eight,” Jillybean said without any theatrics. She stood stock-still until it was obvious that she wasn’t going to cave. Only then did Carl agreed with eight. She went to get a second bomb and a radio detonator. She held it up for him to see. “And how much for this? It’s a radio that will detonate the bombs from like any distance. It’s really pretty cool. You should want it.”
Carl wanted it included in the original price, however when Jillybean began to recite their entire conversation verbatim, making it obvious that the radio had never been mentioned, he said: “One gallon. I can probably get one of those anywhere.” This was such a bad lie that Jillybean laughed. They eventually settled on four more gallons without too much in the way of haggling.
While they waited for the gas, Carl talked about the Wyoming weather and all the while he looked at Jillybean out of the corner of his eye. She sat on the hood of Corolla and politely waited. He had something more to say, but it took him a while for him to spit it out. “You okay, Jillybean?” he finally asked. “You look a little, I don’t know, a little washed out.”
In her opinion, she felt worn nearly to nothing. “Yeah, I guess I’m okay mister Carl, sir. I’m just a little tired. We’ve been all over the place. We even went all the way out to Washington and back.”
He looked confused. “We?”
“Sadie and me. She was out here earlier but she said she got the ‘big run around.’ Not that I blame you guys. I know Mister Neil used to say: ‘all is fair in love and war’ when he used to talk about the days when he was a pirate on Wall Street. I get it.” In truth, she only slightly got it. It was hard for her to equate love and war at all, and when trade negotiations were added to the mix, the triangle it created in her mind became bent to the point that she didn’t see how one went with the other, except perhaps that small lies and minor deceptions were permissible in all three.
“Maybe you two should swing by once we have this all taken care of,” he suggested. “Maybe we can have lunch. She’s not uh, seeing anyone is she?”
There’s the love end of the triangle, Jillybean thought. “No, she’s not, but I know she’s just as eager as I am to get home. It’s been too long.” It was strange to equate the valley with home anymore. They’d be lucky to have three days of being actually ‘home’ before they would set out for Bainbridge. “I’ll ask her though. So maybe.”
When the gas was delivered, she held out her hand and Carl engulfed her small one in his much larger one. He offered her a genuine smile which to her was worth as much as the gas. She hoped Sadie would accept the invitation. A meal of any sort that didn’t come from a can sounded great and Carl’s smile had been genuine and that was even rarer than a home-cooked meal.
Sadie wouldn’t go for it, however. “I don’t want to give him false hope. He’s sort of like an English butler, you know? The way he walks, all stiff, and the way he looks at you. I’m not interested in him in that way. Besides, we’re going to be living in Bainbridge and he’s staying here.” Jillybean wanted to counter with: But he has food! However she understood.
It was with gritty, red-rimmed eyes that Jillybean turned the Corolla south onto I-25. Just seeing the highway was a bit like being home. She knew the landmarks and pointed out each as she drove the twenty-seven miles to the turn off into the mountains.
She knew these peaks even better than she knew the open road, yet she didn’t greet them with the same little grin. Bandits and slavers and who knew what lurked everywhere in the Colorado Rockies. She was so close to home, but with every curve, she was also one mile closer to death.
Chapter 37
Neil Martin
As he had for the last ten days, Neil took his supper in the cupola of the Stanley Hotel. Other than one of the ten-thousand-foot peaks surrounding the valley, the cupola was the highest point within miles. Even if he hadn’t been still recuperating, he wouldn’t have climbed those peaks on a dare. What would be the point?
No, the cupola fit his needs, exactly. It afforded him the best, most comfortable place to keep watch on the roads into Estes—there was a bathroom down a short flight of stairs, he had cove
r from the sun and the rain, and a comfortable chair he’d had lugged up from a back office by one of the few remaining soldiers.
It even had all the privacy a man could want. No one ever went to the Stanley anymore. They were too afraid of the VX residue. Neil had been afraid as well, but thanks to a gas mask and a chicken that Neil had “borrowed” one night from the now very touchy Mr. Meyer, he had found a back way into the hotel that was still perfectly safe.
He had returned the chicken in the same condition he had borrowed it in and now, it and Mr. Meyers were in Wyoming, and Neil was still up in the cupola, alone except with his regrets. For the last month, he had second-guessed himself every minute of every day. At first, it had been: Sending Jillybean was a mistake. That played over and over again like an LP hitting a scratch. Sending Jillybean was a mistake. Sending Jillybean was a mistake…
However, in the last week that had changed had changed to: Why did I send either one of them?
It really wasn’t a mystery. For one, he hadn’t had many choices. Fourteen people had answered the call for volunteers. Half of them were people Neil knew and trusted, and of the remaining seven, three looked stern and capable. That left four people, each of whom had sparked doubt somewhere in him.
One of these had been Jillybean and not because she was small and weak and couldn’t shoot a gun bigger than the little snub-nosed .38 she carried. No, it was because she had been off the rails insane the night Gayle had been killed. When she come out of Fred’s office, he had never seen her so far gone.
And yet, six hours later, she was performing emergency surgery on the side of a mountain road. Her ability to bounce back from anything and everything was the one reason he had let her go—and from the moment her team had driven away in the armored Humvee, he had second-guessed himself.
Jillybean was the wildest of wild cards. If she came back to Estes with six heads in a duffel bag and a story about how she had ridden a unicorn, Neil wouldn’t be surprised.
Sadie was another story. He had let her go, knowing that she would make it back. He was utterly sure of it. How many escapes had she made? How many times had she cheated death? Hell, she had been dead once and had that stopped her? No. She had been chained to a pyramid with her feet on fire and had that stopped her? No. Nothing ever seemed to slow her down for long.
That’s how he felt on day one. Now, a month later, he felt it in his bones that it had been a mistake to send her…or any of them. Jillybean’s team wasn’t the only one that had gone missing.
A sigh swept out of him as he watched the sun go down. He had been pacing, going round and round the cupola. Walking, not just because his nerves were shot and he felt he had to be doing something but also because he needed the exercise. His right leg hadn’t healed as well as he’d hoped it would. This might have been because of Jillybean’s inexperience as a self-taught surgeon or it might have been just the way these things went when a person got shot.
He didn’t know and it didn’t much matter. What mattered was working the leg as much as possible. He had to get stronger because if something had happened to Sadie or Jillybean, he was the only one who would do anything about it.
Nerves in the valley were as tight as a frog’s ass. That’s how Veronica had put it three days before and it had only gotten worse when Grey had returned from out of the wilds…alone. Neil had heard the Buick LeSabre long before he had seen it. With its muffler shot away it had made an ugly Blaaattt noise that could be heard for miles. When he finally did see the car, he stood in mute horror.
It was coated, inside and out in blood. Some had been black zombie blood, but most of it had been human. Some of it had been Grey’s. Although he glared when Neil mentioned it, it seemed that Grey had used up seven of his nine lives on that trip alone. He had not left in the rattletrap LeSabre and where he got it from and how it had come to have so many bullet holes in it, he wouldn’t say. Nor would he talk about his many wounds.
“They’re just scratches,” he had whispered. The “scratches” had bled him nearly dry and a whisper had been all he could handle that first day.
He was strong enough to talk, now, only he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t say anything beyond: “There’s nothing out there for us.”
This wasn’t good enough for Neil. He wasn’t just responsible for Jillybean and Sadie, he had nearly seventy others who looked to him. There had been no vote or coronation or any ceremony that marked his transition from elected governor to dictator, and yet his people did what he asked, without question.
It’s one of the reasons he missed his girls. Sadie would have questioned him on everything simply due to her rebellious nature, while Jillybean would have questioned him to find out why he was about to make this mistake or that. The only time he ever felt truly stupid was when Jillybean was around, and that was okay. It was humbling to be in her presence and if there was one thing he had learned from the likes of Yuri, the River King and the Colonel, every dictator needed his fair share of humility.
“And that’s what means I miss her,” he said, as a cool evening breeze combed back his dirty blonde hair. He patted it back down, not that having his hair in place would make one iota’s difference in his appearance. His once youthful face was scarred and unrecognizable. Fingers, the tip of one ear and most of one eyebrow had been bitten off. And now he walked with a limp. He liked to joke that he was one case of scoliosis away from being the Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
He started down the stairs, caught his foot on one of the rubber, no-slip pads and nearly fell the rest of the way down. “I think I have enough humility, already,” he said, clutching the railing like an old man. Old is how he felt. The sun was down, his belly was full and his bed was calling.
The bed would have to wait. Decisions had to be made. Hard decisions. He gimped his way down the hill towards the west end of town where Captain Grey lived with Deanna and their daughter. Thinking about the infant, Neil tried to put a little more giddy-up in his limp. Emily would be going to bed any minute and there was nothing like looking into her innocent blue eyes to restore his faith in humanity.
She was awake. “There’s my girl,” he said, as soon as he walked through the door. Ignoring everything else, he went to Deanna and, without asking, he took Emily from her arms. “Look how big you are. Yes, you are so big.”
“I used to think I was pretty,” Deanna said, “but when Em is around, I just fade into the background.”
“Did you hear something?” Neil asked Emily. She had a little fist plugged knuckle-deep in her mouth and only stared with huge unblinking eyes at him. “There must be a ghost in the room. Or the walls are talking.” Emily pulled her hand out of her mouth and grabbing Neil’s nose, making it glisten.
“Let me get you a towel,” Deanna said.
Neil grabbed her hand before she could take a step. “Are you kidding me? Baby slobber is precious stuff. I don’t think I’ll ever wash my nose again. Though, I’d wash her hands if I were you. Just wait ’til I’m done.” Deanna had her hands around Emily’s squishy little tummy, but when Neil pulled her back, she didn’t fight it. She only reached in and gave him a kiss on his cheek.
The kiss was the only bit of affection he’d had since Sadie had planted one in the exact same spot a month before.
“Don’t egg him on,” Captain Grey said. He had come down the stairs, taking them easily as if he hadn’t nearly bled to death only a few days before. He had recovered. It was as simple as that, and although the wrinkles around his eyes were deeper and his vaunted glare quicker to show itself, his near-death experience and whatever harsh, soul-rending adventures he had been on hadn’t changed him. If anything, he was even tougher than before he had left.
Deanna was the exact opposite. Her skin had become even more soft and her hair more golden in the last month. It was hard to imagine this was the same Valkyrie who had destroyed one Stryker and stolen another to lead the final charge against the Azael.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Grey,” Neil
said. “We had our fling while you were gone. I had to break it off. She was getting too clingy. And who wants that?” The answer: Neil did. Not with Deanna, but with someone. He had never loved the ex-sex slave Gayle, but he had appreciated her in every way and missed her more and more.
Grey’s dark eyes, as sharp as ever, didn’t show the least amount of mirth. He could see into his friend and knew he was feeling pain on many levels. “No sign of them, I’m guessing?”
“None. And it’s time. Ten days to get to the coast. Five days to explore their section, ten to get back and a five day cushion. That fifth day is now and it’s just about up. The girls…I’m worried sick that they may not be coming back.”
“You’re not worried about Steinman and Jimmy?” Grey asked and now his eyes were unnaturally sharp. “And what about Digadio’s group? Tell me you are worried about them?”
Right away, Neil understood his mistake. Grey was a soldier first and although it was expected that they fight and die for those weaker than themselves, it wasn’t alright that they be regulated to second-class; that they be forgotten in any way. “Of course I am. I haven’t forgotten them, but I think if Jillybean and Sadie didn’t make it, then that Jimmy kid never could. And Digadio…” A sigh escaped him and his eyes cut away from Grey. “He had the shortest route. He should have been back last week and that’s even with the cushion.”
“There could have been a rockslide or a detour,” Grey said in the soft way desperate men spoke as they grasped at straws. If Neil closed his eyes, he could imagine a child version of Grey standing in front of him. “We don’t know what he ran into. Both teams might just be delayed, that’s all. Neil, we have to give them more time.”
Time was something they didn’t have. There had been trouble, a fact Deanna had insisted on keeping from Grey until he had healed. He was healed enough in Neil’s view, and in hers. She steeled herself to tell him and the transition from mother to warrior was seamless. The soft features of her face grew hard and Neil could see the Valkyrie once more behind her eyes. “Grey, I didn’t want to tell you this until you were strong enough because I know you. I know how pig-headed you can be when you feel that the people you care about are being threatened.”
The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice Page 39