The Undead World (Book 10): The Apocalypse Sacrifice

by Peter Meredith

  “Alright, let’s talk,” he said. “Where are you so I can come get you?”

  “That’s okay, I’m right outside your gates.” She had tracked him to a place called Broadmoor Estates. It had once been a gated community where giant houses surrounded a fancy golf course. Now that the fairways had been converted to farmland, it wasn’t nearly as fancy. She added: “You don’t gotta be afraid. I ran out of drones.”

  She had used the word “afraid” on purpose. There were probably a hundred of his men listening in on their conversation and she knew that most men didn’t like the idea of being thought of as afraid.

  “He’ll let us in,” she said to Sadie.

  And then what? Sadie asked. They won’t let you get ten feet with a detonator in your hands.

  “Then I won’t get ten feet,” Jillybean replied, with a dejected little shrug. It was pretty much all she could manage in the way of emotion. “I have to do this, Sadie, just like you had to risk your life for me.”

  This isn’t risking your life, this is suicide.

  Jillybean couldn’t even bring herself to shrug again. She picked up the remote detonator; it felt very heavy and very real. It made everything else around it, including her little hands, seem less present, as if she and the car and Sadie were already fading away. And they would fade when the bomb went off.

  They would be vaporized and no trace of them would ever be found. The thought sent an ugly feeling through her chest. It was fear. She had known and lived with constant fear for the better part of two years, but this was different. This was the end.

  “I need you, Sadie,” she said, as the fear spread. “I need you to be with me and not try to stop me.” Jillybean didn’t think she could do this alone, because the time for trickery and ploys and genius was over. She had nothing left. She had just the one bomb, and her only hope was that Hatchet-Joe would come out to look at it personally.

  Before Sadie answered, Hatchet-Joe came on the radio. “Come on in, Jillybean. Follow the road to the left past the parking lot. We’re in the clubhouse. And, uh, let me just mention that there will be a sniper rifle centered on your head the entire time. Any funny business and you’ll be dead before you even know it.”

  “Oh,” was all she could think to utter.

  Jillybean was momentarily at a loss and didn’t know what to do or say until Sadie reached out a hand and patted hers. Sadie’s flesh felt real, but icy cold. It’ll be okay, she said. I told you I would be with you, always.

  And suddenly, it was okay, or at least it was as okay as it possibly could be. “Alright, Mister Hatchet-Joe. No funny business.” As she said this, she reached under her seat and clicked on the radio receiver, arming a thousand-pounds worth of explosives.

  In front of her, the heavy gates were hauled back by armed men and she drove through, while behind her came a long line of cars, trucks and SUVs. The more the merrier, Sadie said and grinned her usual impish grin. It filled Jillybean’s heart to see that grin; it gave her the strength to grin back when nothing else could. You ready?

  They were passing a parking lot on their left and the hulking facade of the clubhouse was coming up quickly. It was so large that Jillybean couldn’t see it all through the small front slit in the armor. Nor could she see around her very well. With the passenger side camera torn away, she had no idea at all what was to her right. But did it matter?

  “I’m ready,” she said, pulling up to the Broadmoor clubhouse. She was ready, but didn’t automatically open the door. The rear camera showed the vehicles still filtering in behind her, while the driver’s side feed showed a line of men before the clubhouse doors. At least three of them held bottles. They were Molotov Cocktails, and the sight of them rattled the little girl.

  She was still staring at the gas-filled bottles when the scanner blared: “Are you coming out, or not?”

  “I was just waiting for you.”

  Hatchet-Joe laughed into the radio. “I’m sure you were. But I’m not that stupid. Now, get out of the car or I’ll roast you alive.” The driver side monitor flared white as one of the men lit his bottle.

  “I’m getting out,” Jillybean said, quickly.

  Let’s do this, Sadie said. The grin had faded away, leaving Sadie with a determined look. Jillybean reached for the door handle, but something about the look made her turn back to her sister—it was the exact same look she had worn the last time Jillybean had seen her alive.

  Jillybean tried to match the look as she opened the door and stepped out into the night. In her right hand was the detonator; her left was empty. She knew that her little pea-shooter would be useless against so many men.

  For all of a second, she had a perfect view around her. It was perfect, but disappointing. There were only a dozen foot-soldiers lined up in front of the double doors of the building. They would die in the blast, but likely no one else would. The cars that had followed her in hadn’t come right up with her as she had hoped they would. They were fifty feet back along a secondary road. Maybe a few of the men loitering in the dark would be killed, but not as many as she wished. What was worse was that Hatchet-Joe was nowhere to be seen.

  She was staring around when one of the soldiers hit her with a piercing light and she had to scrunch her eyes closed against it. Footsteps approached, and a rough voice growled: “Drop that.”

  He was referring to the detonator, her one weapon, her single ace in the hole. Without it, she was defenseless, however, just then it wasn’t the game-changer she had hoped it would be. Yes, she would kill a few people and ruin their clubhouse, but unless this was Hatchet-Joe, or he was standing at one of the windows watching her, he would live, and her death would be for nothing.

  “Are you Mister Hatchet-Joe?” she asked. Under the light, she felt smaller than ever, like an ant under a magnifying glass.

  “No. Now drop it or we will shoot you.”

  If she gave up the detonator, she would be, in essence, giving up the bomb. It would only make Hatchet-Joe that much stronger; she couldn’t allow that. Taking a deep breath, she started to squeeze the trigger. Wait! Sadie hissed. Don’t waste the bomb. You know there’s another way to set it off.

  She was right. Jillybean had one more gambit. The bomb’s receiving unit was set to go off when it picked up a certain radio frequency, in this case a 150 megahertz bandwidth broadcast. She had chosen it because it had once been designated for public safety use and was not a standard channel. Few handheld devices even had it as a channel option—but the scanner in the Camry did.

  With a flick of her thumb, she switched the detonator off and tossed it on the ground. “It’s a detonator for a bomb,” she explained. “I was gonna give it to Mister Hatchet-Joe as a gift.”

  “Uh-huh,” was all the man said. There was a crunch of gravel and then Jillybean was frisked—he missed the razor blade and handcuff key sewn into her belt and the paperclip hidden in her hair—but all of her other odds and ends were taken.

  “Watch her,” the man said to another soldier and then turned to the car. A second later, he cursed and blinded Jillybean with the light again. “Is that a bomb?”

  She shielded her eyes with a skinny forearm, but still couldn’t make out anything but the outline of a person. “Yeah. A detonator isn’t all that much good without a bomb. I was gonna show it to Mister Hatchet-Joe. You don’t have to worry, it won’t go off.”

  With a grunt of disbelief, the man turned back to the car. He opened the back door and spun his light around inside where the seats had once been. Jillybean could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead and had to hide a malicious smile. “It’s okay. That stuff is real stable, and that’s what means it takes a small explosion to make it go off. Even bullets won’t blow it up.”

  “If you say so,” he mumbled. He then lifted a radio to his mouth and said, “She’s alone, and get this, she brought a bomb. The backseat is filled with some weird pink stuff, but there is definitely some TNT mixed in with it. I can see it.”

  The radio crackle
d with Hatchet-Joe’s voice, “Do you have the detonator?”

  “Yeah, she actually brought it out to me. For a second there, I thought she was going to blow the damn thing up, right here.”

  “I guess the little bitch chickened out. Watch her, I’ll be right there.”

  Jillybean’s heart was racing and her breath was coming fast and light, but she forced a smile onto her face and turned towards the clubhouse. Hatchet-Joe came striding out a minute later. He seemed to the little girl as though he was some sort of giant. Just as all of his men did, he wore a heavy leather coat that fell almost to his ankles and on top of that he wore a cloak or a cowl. It draped on him, hiding his humanity.

  “Hi,” Jillybean said, with a little wave. She came only to his hip and to look up into his face, she had to crane her head way back. He stared out of the shadow of his cowl for a moment before striding past her and, ducking down, he looked into the car.

  When he came up, he threw back his cowl, showing a surprisingly thin face. He laughed, “Holy fuck, that’s a lot of explosives! Thank goodness none of you fucks managed to stop her, she would’ve blasted you into kingdom come. Where’s that guy who says he knew about computers back in the day?”

  He was addressing the men who had followed Jillybean through the gates; almost all of them were smoking and standing in little clumps. A tall skinny man who wore his heavy leathers much like a coatrack would, came forward, looking nervous. “I knew a bit, you know like programming? I was a programmer for Dell. I worked on their interface…”

  “That’s great,” Hatchet-Joe said, cutting him off. “What I need to know is will that bomb blow up?”

  The skinny man bobbed his shoulders and started to stutter. Jillybean interrupted, stepping forward. “It won’t go off. It’s radio controlled and I can show you…” The fist came out of the dark, catching her completely by surprise and knocking her to the ground. Hatchet-Joe had used only a fraction of his strength but still, the dark sky above spun in circles.

  She tried to get back up, but he stepped down on her chest with a boot that seemed half her size. It was useless to struggle against such strength. He grinned down on her. “Radio controlled?” he asked. When she nodded, he went on, “Tell me, is there enough to blow up the bridge that leads to Bainbridge? I figure the famous Jillybean would know.”

  “Enough to—blow up—five bridges,” she said in a whisper. The boot was crushing down on her, making it impossible for her to take a full breath. “I could—show—you—how…”

  “You already have.” He laughed. “You gave us a radio-controlled detonator which means I have no more use for you.” To Jillybean’s utter shock, he pulled out a pistol with a bore so big she could stick her thumb in it. “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of you and all the crazy crap you’ve pulled off. I heard about what happened to that stupid Russian, and that nutty Jesus-freak, and the River King, and the Azael, and all of it. You know what they all had in common? Besides being dead, of course? They all let you live. They had the chance to put a bullet in your head and they didn’t pull the trigger. I’m not going to make that mistake.”

  To Jillybean’s amazement and horror, she saw that he wasn’t lying. He cocked back the hammer on the pistol. It made a huge mechanical sound that echoed in her little ears. “Any last words?” he asked with a sneer in his voice. Even if she could think of anything beyond the certainty that she was actually about to die, Hatchet-Joe wouldn’t let her speak. He crushed down even harder with his heavy boot until she couldn’t move air one way or another through her lungs.

  Her insides felt like they had turned to water. She was about to die and all she could think was, who could do this? Who could kill a child…a little girl out of hand?

  Hatchet-Joe could. He looked as though he was about to kill a rat he had caught sniffing around his trashcans. “No, last words? Just as well. The only thing that anyone is going to remember about tonight is that I killed a little bitch named Jillybean when no one else could.”

  In a panic, stunned by how quickly everything was happening, Jillybean turned her head away from the gun with its black hole, searching for Sadie. Her one hope was that the ghost of her sister would suddenly materialize and save her. Sadie was close, only it wasn’t the ghost of Sadie Jillybean saw lying in the grass. It was a dead Sadie, pale of face, unmoving, a hole through her chest. She stared silently up at the night sky as her blood leaked down into the earth.

  Even on the verge of death, Jillybean cared more for her sister than she did for her own life. She reached out for Sadie’s hand just as Hatchet-Joe pulled the trigger and the world evaporated in a flash of heat and a blinding light and a long echoing gunshot.

  Chapter 50

  Neil Martin

  From thirty-six feet away, Neil Martin watched Hatchet-Joe shoot his daughter in the head. The sound of the gunshot and the flame leaping out of the barrel stunned and staggered him, leaving him gasping.

  Thirty minutes before, he had watched Jillybean stumble off under the weight of who knew how much exhaustion and stress. She had looked strangely old and withered in his eyes as if she had lived her entire life in the days since he had seen her last.

  “I’m going after her,” he had stated, the moment the night took her and hid her. “I’ll need the truck.” He held out a small hand for the keys, but Grey wasn’t listening. He was still staring after Jillybean and for once he looked, not exactly lost, but rather, he looked uncertain.

  “I-I’m going too,” he said. Still ignoring Neil, he looked towards Deanna with an apologetic grimace. “She needs me. I can’t leave her like that, all alone.”

  Deanna closed her eyes in her own grimace. Her grimace was full of misery. It was understandable; she had just gotten her child back and now her husband was about to race off, two men against hundreds, if indeed Neil was counted as a full man, which no one ever really did.

  She began to shake her head, however the baby in her arms stopped her by reaching up and grabbing a fistful of her long blonde hair. Emily gave the lank of hair a hardy yank and tried to stuff it in her mouth. In response, Deanna hugged her fiercely, almost angrily.

  “Always the hero,” she said. “Fine. Go. Do what you have to, just don’t die for nothing.”

  “Saving a little girl isn’t nothing,” Neil said.

  Deanna’s shoulders drooped and for a moment she looked as old as Jillybean had. “I didn’t say that. I meant, just make it count.” Grey had promised that he would and after two kisses, they were headed for the truck. Deanna called after. “What about a kiss from Uncle Neil?”

  She held up Emily. Neil couldn’t say no to that. He ran back and planted a kiss on the softest cheek and then one on Deanna’s. Once more, he was about to leave when she asked, “How long do we wait? Do we wait for an explosion or whatever, or do we wait for you to come back?”

  Neil knew why she was asking him—she wanted an honest answer, something Grey would never give her under these circumstances. He would dance all around the unlikelihood of their return, telling her that “everything would work out,” or that they’d be “fine,” and “not to worry.”

  “Wait for the explosion that she mentioned,” he told her, “and then take off and don’t look back.” He took a step away, needing to leave, but saw the fear she was hiding beneath the soft features of her face. Even though that had never been their sort of relationship, he had to fight back against spouting the same sort of platitudes that Grey would’ve used. They had always been painfully honest with each other. With a touch of her arm, he said, “See you later.” It was as much of a lie as he was willing to tell her.

  “See you.”

  When Neil got to the truck, Grey was waiting for him, wearing a puzzled look. “I think she’s into me,” Neil lied in answer to the look. He cocked an eyebrow, so Neil said, “Okay, fine, she wanted to know when they should take off. I told her to follow Jillybean’s directions.”

  “Probably a good idea,” Grey agreed, “but what are we going to do? I c
an get us across the river. If she’s got the bridges trapped, I’ll be able to disarm them, no problem. But what then? Any idea?”

  “We really don’t have much choice but to wait until she lets off a few fireworks. Once she does, we…I don’t know, I guess we figure it out as we go.”

  This sort of vague plan didn’t sit well with Grey and as they drove to the next closest bridge, he brooded trying to come up with something better. His quiet, snarled curses told Neil that he wasn’t able to come up with anything, which was too bad because Neil didn’t like the plan either. He knew that after that first explosion, Jillybean would have every slaver in the city after her.

  And he wasn’t wrong.

  They detoured north a few miles to a railroad bridge, which Grey checked with flashlight in hand. He didn’t get far before he was swarmed with zombies and had to run back to the Ford. “Let’s chance it,” he said, when he got back. “There’s no way she’s trapped every bridge on this river.”

  Halfway across, a flash of light to their left, deeper into the city, marked the opening salvo of Jillybean’s battle with Hatchet-Joe and his slavers. Seconds later, the thunder of the explosion rolled over the two. Neither said a word. Grey drove on, while Neil reached into the backseat where a pair of M4s rested on the back bench. He made sure they were loaded. Next, he checked the extra magazines—it took all of a minute.

  Neil wished there was more for him to do. Even after all of his adventures, he was still nervous before the prospect of violence. Grey, on the other hand, was perfectly cool as he spun the big Ford south, merging onto I-5, heading to where the glow of a large fire lit up the otherwise dark city.

  Ahead of them through a narrow lane of refuse and old, rusted-out vehicles was the first evidence of Jillybean’s handiwork: a Nissan Pathfinder was pitched over on its side with great sheets of flame leaping from its carcass. To the right of it, another Ford, this one with huge tires, was plowing a hole through the debris. Behind it, waiting to get through, was a silver Bentley. Two men leaned against it, both armed to the teeth. One pushed himself away from the car and started towards them.