The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice

by Peter Meredith

  Once she got a skip and a hop mixed together and came down right on one of the cracks. She looked stricken for a moment and then said, “My mom is dead already. I forgot.” She tried to give Grey a smile but it was strained and there was something hidden behind her eyes, something that wasn’t in any way normal. After fixing that smile in place, she went back to skipping and hopping like any other little girl in the world might.

  Grey felt an urge to say something concerning Sadie, but the moment he began, his throat tightened. He had loved Sadie. He wanted to pretend that he loved her as he loved his men, but that was a lie. “A fucking lie,” he growled under his breath and turned away to stare up at the mountains hemming in the valley so that Jillybean wouldn’t see him trying to blink back tears.

  It didn’t help that he happened to be facing east, towards the same hills that Sadie had fought with such tenacity to save his ass from the Azael.

  “She may not be completely gone,” Jillybean said, in a soft, secretive voice.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, running a quick sleeve across his eyes.

  She was quiet for a moment, her head down. She shrugged. “Nothing. I-I was just joking, I guess. So…So Mister Captain Grey, sir, have you ever been to Seattle? If you want, you can ask me about it. You know like what the city looked like or stuff.”

  “So I can verify that you’ve been there? I believe that you were, but that’s not really the issue and I think you know it. Let’s talk about something else.”

  Of course, that ended the conversation. They walked in silence, glancing at each other every few steps out of the corner of their eyes. Grey thought about her story as they walked and was glad they weren’t going to the coast. The ferocity and the utter disregard for human life in the west had shocked him.

  He blamed it on the mountains themselves. Mountain ranges and the harsh badlands that surrounded them stretched from the suburbs of Denver all the way to the Pacific, and in them the people were cut off and isolated from each other. They lived, not on the majestic peaks, but down in the hidden dales and gorges where fear pooled and viciousness congealed.

  Grey didn’t fear that Jillybean had made up parts of her story, his fear was that too much of it was true.

  It wasn’t until they got to the rear of the school where there was an asphalt-covered track that Jillybean spoke again. “Hey, Captain Grey, sir, watch how fast I can run now.”

  With her skinny legs turning circles, she ran down the straightaway with surprising speed. She walked about for thirty seconds, catching her breath and then came racing back. “I-I’ve b-been practicing,” she gasped out. “I-I gotta do s-some more so I can be fast like Sadie. Do you ever think I will be?”

  “If you keep that up, I don’t see why not,” Grey said. He watched her sprint down the track again, thinking that she had more determination in her than any child he had ever met. “Or any adult for that matter.”

  With a wave, he turned away and set his mind on the task ahead, knowing it would be a long day.

  Grey went to the school and saw that the SUVs and the trucks were even then being pushed through the open doors of the gymnasium. There were seven of each, plus extras. The extra vehicles would have to go. “I wouldn’t want to get any guff,” he said. Normally he would have smirked at the word guff and the idea that anyone would have the balls to give him any, but he couldn’t find it in him to smile. His slowly ebbing stress and his new grief were still too heavy on him.

  “Sorry, Mark you can’t take the Jeep. It’s too small. The boss won’t allow it, no matter how pretty it is. Let’s get it out of here and drained.” Grey rolled his eyes as the immaculate Jeep was pushed back through the double doors. Why polish something that was meant to be dirty? In his opinion, it was like polishing the bottom of his shoes.

  Four others had brought their SUVs along and Grey sent them packing as well, but not before taking every ounce of gas from them. They were dangerously low on fuel. Neil, who had the math to prove it, said they had enough fuel to make it to Michigan. Of course, those calculations were for a direct route and what was the likelihood that would happen?

  Grey told himself he would worry about scrounging when the time came for that particular worry. During that long afternoon, he was too busy for worry. The vehicles had to be inspected from bumper to bumper. Seven tires had to be switched out, all of them needed oil changes and windshield wipers. Three of them would be towing trailers and these had to be checked as well.

  While Grey worked with his team of amateur mechanics, another team went through town collecting the last of the food. The remaining sixty-eight people in the valley were to keep three meals worth of food. The rest was to be packed into the trailers.

  “Hey, Mister Captain Grey, sir?” Jillybean asked, appearing at his elbow, suddenly. She had drifted in and out of the gymnasium for the last few hours, sometimes inspecting the vehicles alongside of Grey, sometimes fidgeting with the four drones, sometimes mumbling to herself, and sometimes disappearing for long stretches. “What are we having for dinner tonight? Can we have the peanut butter again?”

  “You better ask Deanna. She’s the officer in charge of peanut butter.” She saw the question forming behind her eyes and cut it off. “There’s no peanut butter officer. I was just joking. She’s planning dinner is what I meant.”

  Jillybean smiled just a quick flash and then it was gone. He didn’t see her again until he dragged his tired ass home four hours later, long after the sun had set. He was sure he was going to hear from Deanna about how much he had “over done it,” but she seemed equally tired and didn’t have the strength to nag.

  “Neil’s been a wreck,” she whispered, and glancing into the living room where a red-eyed Neil Martin sat on the couch staring into the dregs of a glass. She handed Grey his own glass of white wine which was, surprisingly, chilled to a proper temperature. “Jillybean set two bottles in the river. She says it’s what goes best with peanut butter sandwiches. That girl is crazy…I mean in a good way this time.”

  “Are you saying it really does go with peanut butter?”

  Deanna snorted. “Only if you drink it first. Speaking of which, according to the Jillybean ‘rules,’ we had to wait to eat until the man of the house got here. I hope you’re hungry for peanut butter and trout. Veronica caught a few this morning. She didn’t know what else to bring Neil.”

  They also had roasted potatoes courtesy of Jillybean, who had a few left over from her trip. “They were under the seat and had these little sprouts growing on them, but they’re probably still good,” she said. She was right and although it didn’t seem like potatoes, peanut butter and trout would go together, the meal was perfectly fine.

  Grey was sure that the wine helped. It was heady stuff and just what the doctor ordered as far as Neil was concerned. He talked about Sadie, switching back and forth between tears and laughter in a manner that was good for him. He needed to grieve, he needed to sleep and then tomorrow he would need to get back to the basics of survival and leading his flock.

  Jillybean was silent during all this and barely moved. She looked like a doll with plastic eyes, but Neil’s sadness was too overpowering and the adults let her be.

  When both bottles had been drunk and Neil had red splotches in his cheeks, he and Jillybean said their goodbyes and started for their home. Grey considered walking with them, however he was just too tired. He yawned and Deanna yawned right back, and when they fell asleep, Grey was out so quickly that he couldn’t remember whether he had kissed her goodnight or not.

  He slept like the dead until morning, and it wasn’t Emily who woke him. A heavy thumping sounded in his dreams and slowly, groggily he sat up. The thumping continued and only gradually did he realize that it was coming from his front door.

  “What the hell?” Deanna slurred from beneath her pillow.

  “I’ll get it,” Grey said, getting up. He swayed a bit and had to catch hold of his dresser. Am I hung over? he wondered. His mouth sure tasted e
nough like crap to think so. “Hold on, hold on,” he said as the thumping continued.

  When he opened the door, a distraught Neil Martin burst in, pushing past him. “Jillybean’s gone. Is she here? Have you seen her?”

  Grey grabbed him before he could go rushing through the house, waking Emily and Deanna. “No and will you keep your voice down? Have you tried her old lab or the garage?”

  Neil shook his head, looking confused and anxious. “Her car’s gone. Did…did I wake you?”

  “Yeah, it’s no big deal,” Grey said, bringing his watch up. “I had to get up any…” The watch read a quarter after nine. That wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. He never slept in so late—never. And what’s more, neither did Emily. Before he knew exactly what was wrong or why he felt a rising panic, he was rushing for his daughter’s room.

  He stopped in the doorway, her crib was empty.

  Chapter 41

  Neil Martin

  It was as if Neil had accidentally let a tornado into the home. He stood back as Deanna and Grey went flying around the house, frantically throwing things about and screaming at each other to check this place or that as if Emily, who could only turn from her tummy to back under the best of circumstances, that is with a little help or perhaps if she were placed on a slanted floor, had somehow crawled off.

  “Her bottles are gone,” Deanna cried, racing from the kitchen.

  “So are her diapers,” Grey said in a whisper. In the course of the next second, he went from stunned and frightened to apoplectic anger. “She did this, Neil! Don’t even try to deny it, and don’t even think about making excuses for her. The wine was her idea. She kept pouring it. She was trying to get us drunk. It was her plan all along to steal Emily!”

  Neil had been in an utter panic twenty minutes before when he had crawled out of bed to an empty house and an empty driveway. The missing car had cemented the fear because Jillybean had absolutely known the seriousness of their gas problem. She wouldn’t have taken the Corolla to go fishing or visiting or for any reason, unless she was leaving the valley, something she wouldn’t do without telling him, or at least leaving a note.

  Now, the panic had subsided, leaving him clear-headed. Grey was right, she had taken Emily and there were only two logical reasons she would have done that: to kill the baby or to save all of them. “She wasn’t just trying to get us drunk,” Neil replied. “I’m willing to bet she drugged us as well. That’s the good news. It means she wanted us out of…”

  “Good news?” Grey thundered, cutting him off. “How can you possibly say that drugging us is good fucking news?”

  “Because it means she wanted Emily alive. If she wanted us or Emily dead, she could have killed us last night while we were sleeping. Hell, she could have slipped us something worse than sleeping pills or whatever she used. She knows a great deal about medicines. I’m pretty sure she could have poisoned us if she had wanted to.” Deanna whimpered and Neil went on, quickly, “She could have but she didn’t. If I had to guess, I’d say that Emily is safe.”

  “All you have is a guess?” Deanna asked. She had been desperately hoping for more from Neil. He could see it in her wide eyes.

  “Yes, but it’s a very sound guess, Deanna. Just think, Sadie would never let Jillybean hurt Emily.”

  Grey went red, his face a hideous mask of anger. “Sadie is dead, Neil! Sadie can’t do anything about any of this.”

  “She’s not dead to Jillybean. Sadie is still very much alive to her. I saw the signs. We probably all did and we all know that Sadie would never let her do anything to Emily.”

  “Except kidnap her?” Deanna asked. She didn’t have Grey’s volcanic anger. Instead, she looked stunned.

  Neil took a deep breath. There was a dread building beneath the fragile sense of calm and if there was any chance to keep the situation from going nuclear, he had to hold it together. “Yes, except that, but there’s an obvious reason she took the baby. Jillybean is like all of us, she just wants a safe place to live. In her mind, Beaver Island isn’t safe. It’s unknown and that scares her. But she knows Bainbridge. She’s going there and she wants us to follow her.”

  Somehow Grey’s rage seemed to only increase. It was so daunting that Neil took a step back. Grey had his meaty hands at chest height and they were straining as if choking an invisible neck. “I’ll follow her all right and when I catch her…”

  “No,” Neil said, softly. “You won’t follow her, at least not alone.” Deanna started to say that she would be going as well, but Neil cut her off. “We’ll all be going. Jillybean wants us to go to Bainbridge and we will, for better or for worse. No, Grey, sorry. I know you want to tear on out of here, but if you go then Deanna will go, and I’ll have to go and that would mean Veronica will come, too. Her boyfriend won’t want to leave her and neither will Kay and her boyfriend, and so on. Do you see? We’ll be leaving unprepared and on what road? I know in your head you see yourself catching up to her sometime tonight, out in some wilderness as she’s sitting by a fire, but we both know that won’t be the way it works. There are a thousand roads between us and Bainbridge. Which one did she take?”

  Grey’s mouth came open and for a moment he looked not just lost, but utterly crushed. Neil combed his mangled left hand through his hair, furious with Jillybean, but unable to show it. Someone had to be calm or things would crumble quickly.

  “We could get ahead of her,” Grey said. “We could spread out, stake out different roads, the major ones at least and…”

  Again, Neil said, “No.” He didn’t have to be loud to stop Grey’s words. “She’ll already be on the lookout for bandits. She’ll see you from miles away.”

  “We are not just going to sit here and do nothing!” Grey yelled, the veins in his neck were distended and the scars vibrant and his fists were rock-hard hammers that could pummel Neil into mush. In the face of his fury, Neil leaned away until his shoulder hit the wall of the living room.

  “We’re not going to do nothing. She left a note,” he said, thinking on the fly. “She wants us to follow her, so it only goes to reason there will be one. It’s either here or at my house or somewhere she’d know we would look. We just have to find it.”

  The three of them immediately started searching. Deanna went to her daughter’s room and began opening and closing drawers at lightning speed; her sobs tore Neil’s heart to pieces. Grey tried to console her, but she threw a book of nursery rhymes at him. They didn’t find a note after twenty minutes of searching. Another half-hour was wasted at Neil’s place.

  “Don’t get down, Deanna,” Neil said, half-expecting her to slap him. “She did this on purpose. She’s just trying to give herself more of a head start. She’s probably afraid of what will happen to her if we catch her before she gets to Bainbridge.”

  “She should be because I’ll kill her,” Deanna said.

  At that exact moment, Neil didn’t doubt her; she was a mother and she would defend her child with her life. Then again, Neil was Jillybean’s father. He had looked the little girl right in the eye and told her as much, and he had said it fully aware of her problems. It wasn’t something that he would take back at the first sign of trouble.

  “Then we’re going to have a problem,” he told her. She was three inches taller than him and ten years younger. If they fought, there was no telling who would win—or so Neil told himself.

  She walked forward, seeming to grow taller and taller, and was certainly angrier than he, but none of that mattered to Neil, he would accept a beating in order to protect Jillybean’s life. It wasn’t as though she would get away scot free. She would have to face the consequences of her actions, but he had no idea what they would be. Expulsion was the likely outcome and if that was the punishment, then he would go with her.

  But no one would hurt her.

  Grey saved him from a possible beating. He stepped between them. “Stop it,” he growled. “This isn’t helping. If there’s a note, then let’s find it. If there isn’t one, th
en I’m going after her. She went through Wyoming; Cheyenne probably, that’s obvious. I’ll give it an hour to find this note and then, I’m sorry, Neil but I’m going after her.” The hour passed so quickly that it left Neil gasping. He had run to each of her old Estes haunts: the foul-smelling lab, the repair shop, where he covered himself in grease as he searched, and finally the library.

  He stood in front of a thousand books and despaired. Jillybean didn’t have a favorite—they were all her favorites. He ran to the “Sciences” section and raced down the titles, hoping that something would jump out at him. Nothing did and so he started scanning titles beginning with anything that had to do with chemistry, and then biology and when that proved fruitless, physics.

  “No, not physics,” he hissed, angry at himself. Physics was almost all theoretical and Jillybean liked the concrete. She liked someone to tell her what was pure fact as opposed to conjecture.

  He was going in circles, or so it felt, when the front door opened with a heavy thud. Captain Grey stood, just a silhouette framed by the late morning sun. “There’s no note,” he stated and then paused as if waiting for the library to second guess him. When the air remained still and the building quiet…deathly so, he said, “Deanna and I are leaving. I suggest you take the others on to Beaver Island. We’ll catch up.”

  “You know I can’t do that. My daughter is out there, too.”

  “Suit yourself,” Grey said. Without another word, he turned around and left, slamming the door behind him.

  Neil cursed under his breath and rushed after him, blinking and throwing a hand up as the daylight partially blinded him. “Grey! Wait up. Why are you acting as if this is my fault? I didn’t do anything wrong.” Grey only grunted in answer and for a quarter mile they were silent except for Neil’s labored breathing. Grey was marching at such a clip that it felt like strenuous exercise to Neil.

  When the high school came into view, Neil said, “We can maybe get everything ready in about four hours, possibly three, since I can probably show everyone the importance of what has hap…”