This was all he needed to hear. “Threatened by whom,” he asked with cold menace in his voice.
“We don’t know,” Neil said. “There have been, I guess ‘probes’ is how best to describe them. Small groups of men have been checking out the walls and coming up over the hills at night. It may be nothing. It may be just some scroungers looking to see if we are going to leave anything behind, but it also might be scouts for a larger group. All I know is I don’t have enough people to guard a ten mile perimeter, not for long, at least.”
Grey went to one of the windows and pulled back the blackout curtain. He peered into the night for a moment and then turned back to Neil, who was having his hair yanked on by a four-month old who didn’t know her own strength. “What time at night do they come?” Grey demanded. “Are they consistent? You know, the same number of men coming from the same direction. That sort of thing.”
“Look, that’s not why I’m here,” Neil said. “I…I…” He couldn’t seem to bring himself to spit out the truth. After a deep breath, he tried again. “We can’t stay any longer. The only reason those scroungers, or whoever they are, are out there is because the rumors of what happened are starting to spread. These probes really could be nothing, however it’s just a matter of time before some of those old Azael guys hear that we’ve been abandoned, and when they do they’ll come down on us like a ton of bricks. We know this. We’ve already discussed this. Now, we have to do something about it. Was there anything, any hint or rumor or anything about someplace safe?”
Grey shrugged. “Puerto Vallarta.”
“Puerto Vallarta, Mexico?” Neil asked. “That Puerto Vallarta?”
“There’s supposed to be good fishing, and the infrastructure is still intact. Those were the rumors at least. I heard them from two different groups. Well, one was a bandit with a gun pointed at my head, but you get it.”
Neil blew out in exasperation, causing Emily’s wispy hair to dance. “I get it, but do you? Puerto Vallarta? Please, it’s someone’s pipe dream.”
“Probably, but what else do we have?” Grey demanded. “If the other groups have failed, where do we go? I can buy us time by taking out these scroungers, but we still have to find a place. If you ask me, Mexico is as good a place as any. I could use some R&R on the beach.”
Deanna made a face. “Mexico was almost third world even before all this. I say Wisconsin; way up north near Superior. I used to camp up there in the summer. There’s hunting and fishing…”
“And freezing your ass off,” Grey interjected. “You know those winters are brutal. They could be deadly as well. When you lived there, everyone had four-wheel drives and snowplows. It won’t be the same. We won’t even have horses. What do you think, Neil? Doesn’t Mexico sound good to you? Margaritas, surfing, a little salsa?”
“Hmmm. It’s a choice between two extremes: too hot and too cold. If I had to live in either, I would go with Wisconsin. If there’s anyone left up there, we will at least speak the same language. And the people used to be more polite up in the midwest. That’s what I heard at least. Either way, it’s going to be up to you two. I’m not going.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Grey demanded.
Neil gazed down at Emily as he said: “I’m talking about you and Deanna leading the group to Wisconsin or Mexico or wherever. I’m staying behind to wait for Sadie and Jillybean…and Degadio, of course. I’ll catch up when I can.”
A heavy silence, a curtain of nothing, came down between the three of them that none of them wanted to break. The silence was an illusion, part of the lie they had been telling themselves. The truth, in Neil’s mind, was that if Grey had barely made it back alive, the others didn’t stand any chance.
Neil kept the lie going, “The weather is nice and I had Veronica get me a tent. I’ll hide up in the hills until they, uh get here. I should be perfectly safe.”
Another long silence held sway in the room until Grey asked, “And if they never come back?”
“Then I’ll go look for them,” Neil answered. He knew that Grey was a second from declaring that he would go as well, so Neil went on in a rush, “By myself. You’re needed here, Grey. All those people out there need you, and Deanna needs you and so does Emily.”
“And those two girls need me, too,” he replied, turning from them to face the covered window again. “And you need me, Neil. We both know that chances are some slavers got a hold of them and, I’m sorry to say, if you try to save them by yourself, you’ll die.”
As if that hadn’t already crossed my mind, Neil thought. “Yeah, well the plan isn’t perfect. But like I said, our people need real leadership. They would be lost on their own. I have full confidence that Deanna will be a great leader, once Emily here is a little bigger, but right now they both need you, Grey. They need you more than I need you. Emily needs her father.” Neil walked over and handed the baby to his friend.
“I know,” Grey said, quietly. He was torn, that much was obvious, and yet his eyes sparkled as he gazed into his daughter’s eyes. He would make the right decision and that left Neil alone to prepare for a journey, and likely, a battle.
He patted Grey on the shoulder, kissed both Emily and Deanna and left them. There was no need to hurry now. His fate was set. There would be a journey and fighting and living day to day, and if he was very lucky he would find his daughters in the vast wilderness and if he was fantastically lucky, he would be able to save them from whatever disaster that had befallen them.
“But how do I work this tent?” he asked, when he got home. In his living room was a jumble of poles, a spray of aluminum pegs, and a perfectly folded tent. All of it had come out of a neat little carrying case and he knew that he would never be able to get it back in again. He wouldn’t even try.
“If there is one thing life has taught me, it’s that tent makers are sadists. How tough would it be to make the bag just an inch or two bigger? And these instructions. What the fu…” From outside there was the sound of an engine and the crunch of gravel under a tire. Neil found himself frozen in place, holding his breath.
No one drove in the Valley; no one had the gas. The last of their gas was kept under lock and key. Neil checked the supply almost every day and if he ever caught someone touching it there would be trouble. Everyone knew that. So, this was either an emergency or…a car door opened with a rusty squeak.
“Last one there is a rotten egg!” a girl’s voice cried. Beneath that was the sound of size eight Keds slapping the sidewalk. It was Jillybean. There was no question. Stiff and slow, robotically, he opened the door just in time to be smashed into by the girl.
She gripped him in a fierce hug.
“We found a place, Mister Neil!” she cried. “We found a place! It’s in Washington. It’s called Bainbridge. It’s an island and we had to drive a bus off a dock to get there. And I met a girl named Corina and another named Anita. And poor Sergeant Steinman got killded and Jimmy ran off because he was afraid of this guy named Baloo, like in Baloo the Bear, from that book.”
She went on, but Neil was barely listening. She was still hugging him and it was wonderful. Eventually, he had to pull back. Jillybean had grown. Her hair was longer but just as messy. There were shadows under her eyes that sent a shiver of worry through his joy.
He was sad to hear about Steinman, who had been a good man, and wasn’t terribly surprised about Jimmy running off, but he was most concerned with his daughters. “Where’s Sadie? Is she okay?”
“Oh, she’s being a slow poke on account of her getting shot in the lung,” Jillybean said. “But that was ages ago. Like ten days or two weeks or something. It’s hard to keep track. You know how that is.”
“Shot?” Neil pushed past Jillybean, heading out the door. “In the lung?”
Jillybean hurried to keep up, saying, “Yeah. It was pretty bad, but now I got her on a new antibiotic, so she’ll be fine. Hey, Sadie! Why aren’t you getting out of the car?”
They stopped five feet away fro
m what looked like a dull grey Corolla. Although it was dark, it was obvious that the car was empty. “Jillybean,” he said, without strength in his voice. Really, his entire body felt as though it was wilting, as though his bones were going soft and his muscles becoming mushy like cereal that had sat too long in a bowl of milk.
“Yes?” she answered. She turned and cranked her chin up; her smile undimmed.
“What happened to her? Where is she? Is…is she alive?”
Jillybean’s smile suddenly froze on her face however her eyes took on a living panic. She turned to the car and for a moment only stared, those eyes lasering in on details: a bit of black blood on the hood, the worn tread on the front left tire, a starred chip in the windshield.
The panic built in those eyes until it exploded, coursing through her thin body until it reached her feet at which point she ran to the passenger door screaming, “Sadie! Sadie! What are you doing?” She dove into the car, her hands touching everything and nothing. “Where is she?” she asked.
She looked to Neil for answers, but he couldn’t speak. He thought he knew Jillybean and the depth of her insanity, but he was wrong. His Sadie wasn’t missing. She was dead.
Chapter 38
Neil Martin
“Sadie!” Jillybean yelled, frantically running from the car, heading into the street. She stopped in the middle, looked in both directions and then raced back towards the little cottage.
Neil was so weak that he could only lift a hand to waist height as she ran past, heading for the backyard. “Jillybean,” he whispered. Even if he had wanted to, he couldn’t find the strength to follow her. He only stood, looking down at an old oil stain on the driveway of the cottage. The color went deep into the cement. It would last until the world turned the driveway to dust, long after the world had forgotten his Sadie.
He was still staring at it when he heard Jillybean say, “There you are!”
Hot relief flooded Neil and, with a goofy grin, he found himself racing for the backyard, knocking into the Humvee that he was supposed to use for official business, but never did, and smashing into the gate, sending the door flying back, and scratching red lines across his face as he hit one of the overgrown mulberry bushes he had been meaning to trim.
For those few moments, he was as insane as Jillybean. He actually thought that he would see his eldest daughter standing in the backyard with an impish smile on her face. But there was only Jillybean. She was there in the yard only steps away, framed in the thin light of a crescent moon—whether it was waxing or waning Neil couldn’t have cared less.
There was a mumble that he was sure had come from another of the mulberry bushes along the row. Jillybean made a pained face. “No. He’s freaking out, like real bad and so was I. No one’s going to think this is funny. Come on.”
Neil had stopped with his head cocked away from the bush he had run into, his right eye blinking back blood. He was afraid to go on, afraid that if he went any further, he would see nothing but cold shadows. Jillybean stood just feet away, but who or what she was addressing couldn’t be seen. He cleared his throat, sounding like a bloated frog. She jerked, caught by surprise. Still the smile she gave him was reassuring. It was real and just then Neil needed a heavy, heavy dose of reality.
He stepped to the right, his heart caught up in his throat, his eyes filled with tears, but ready all the same to laugh or scold or hug or….or anything. He was ready to do anything but accept what he knew was true. Another step to the right and there was a prayer on his lips, “God, please, please…”
Jillybean gestured to the bush. “She’s being so silly. She’s…she’s…what? What’s wrong? Neil, what’s wrong? Why are you looking like that?”
Neil touched his face. It felt plastic. It felt as though his fingers were tracing the jaw of a corpse. An old one, one that was cold. “Jillybean.” He pointed at what she had been talking to and it wasn’t Sadie. It was only a bush, nothing more.
She looked at the bush, her eyes scanning, looking past its new shoots, pretty and vibrantly green, and past its long branches reaching out to her. She looked to where the darker shadows in its core fused into solid blackness. She stared deeper and deeper into the bush as if it went on forever. She stared until her face grew as dead and plastic as his. She stared until her chin started wagging back and forth and there were little diamonds on her cheeks.
“Where is she?” Jillybean asked.
Even though that was the exact question he wanted to ask her, Neil knew the answer already. Sadie was dead. She wasn’t stuck in some slave truck or being held hostage in some mountain cabin. She was dead. Jillybean hadn’t left her behind. Jillybean never would. She would tear down the gates of hell for her sister, of that Neil was certain.
“Where is she?” Jillybean asked again, reaching into the bush, pushing aside the branches as if Sadie had fallen into the black core. One of the branches was stiff and sharp—Jillybean nearly ran her eye into it. She didn’t blink as it cut her cheek.
Jillybean had become numb, or so Neil guessed. He was numb. A stick could go right through his chest and he wouldn’t feel a thing. It was a horribly familiar sensation. When he had been forced to watch Ram turn into a zombie, Neil had felt numb, and when he had found Sarah’s burnt body, he had been so numb he felt disconnected from the world, as if he could float away. And when he’d buried Eve, the shovel blistered his hands, but he hadn’t known until the following day when he went to wash away the grave dirt. He had looked down at his bleeding palms and wondered whose they were.
But this was worse. This was a thousand times worse. Sadie had been with him from the beginning. Oh, she had been just a kid! So young and so full of life. Sadie had a fire in her, a need to live that Neil had never felt before, and right from the start he had loved her. She had awakened him and forced him to live even while the world around them was dying.
He had a perfect picture of her in his mind of the moment she had stepped into his Montclair home to rob him. “She had called me a Prius fag,” he said, laughing and crying at the same time. “She took my…”
Jillybean started screaming again, interrupting him. This time it was a long piercing shriek that cut into the fog surrounding Neil’s mind. With wet, bleary eyes, he looked at her and for a moment simply didn’t understand what her problem was. Selfishly, he wanted to grab the little girl and yell into her face: She was my daughter, not yours! I’m the one who is suffering for fuck’s sake!
Then he saw how broken she was and finally felt something beyond his own greedy despair. He felt ashamed. The only person who had ever shown Jillybean unconditional love was Sadie. Only Sadie.
Ram had been weak, as much devoted to revenge as he had been to the little girl. Sarah had Eve and her love for the infant had consumed her and eventually killed her. Grey was a captain of men and had looked upon Jillybean as just another of his soldiers. He loved and respected her, and would give his life for her, but this was true with all of his men. Deanna had always secretly feared Jillybean. She saw the truth in her. She looked upon Jillybean in the same way she would look upon a nuclear reactor: it was extremely valuable and useful, but if left unattended it could destroy the planet.
And then there was Neil. His first thought upon seeing her was that now he had someone to trade for Sadie. Had he considered her feelings? No, not for a second. Sadie’s kindness and Shondra’s mental weakness had eventually redeemed him and had given him a second chance to be a father figure to the girl. But then Eve had been kidnapped and Sarah had died and Sadie had been taken by the River King and on and on until it was all just a blur, and in the end, it was Jillybean who always paid.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her in a whisper. He hadn’t expected his soft words to cut through to her, but the scream stopped immediately.
She turned her huge blue eyes on him. They were empty on the surface, like the china-blue eyes of a doll, but deeper down there was a sadness in them that smote Neil. He stepped towards her, thinking they both were i
n desperate need of a hug, but she jumped back.
“This is my fault,” she said. “I did this. I-I am insane. Everyone knows that. Insane is what means I made her disappear. Right?” Suddenly, she started waving her arms about as if trying to find an invisible person. “Sadie? I’m right here, Sadie. Can you hear me?”
“Oh, j-jeeze,” Neil said, blubbering worse than ever.
He tried to grab Jillybean but she ran, screaming, “I need my pills! They’ll bring her back. They’ll make everything alright. I shoulda kept taking them. I never should have stopped. But I have them! They’re in the car.” He followed her, but she had become quick and he couldn’t seem to grab her, not until she stopped abruptly in the driveway and then he was afraid to touch her because she was quivering, looking as if she was about to explode.
“Pills aren’t going to bring her back, Jillybean,” Neil told her. “They won’t help you.”
“Right because I don’t have them anymore. I buried them, just like I buried Spot. I buried him in this yard. It was a strange yard and he was a stranger, really.” She grew still and Neil started to offer an ill-thought out platitude, when she reached into her pocket and pulled out a little nickel-plated gun. For the moment it dangled in her hand. “Is she dead, Mister Neil? Did I dream all of this? Am…am I crazy again?”
Neil didn’t dare tell her the truth. “Let’s find out together. Just tell me what happened.”
A garbled laugh of despair escaped her. “Tell you? No, this will be easier.” The gun came up to her temple so quickly that Neil was only just able to grab the barrel and shove it away before she pulled the trigger. The bullet passed through her flyaway hair and went out into the night sky.
The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice Page 40