The Apocalypse Fugitives

by Peter Meredith

  After dodging the truck around a crater-like pothole and seeing the highway clear far ahead, Grey said, "You can practice steering if you want to. You could sit on my lap."

  "No thank you," Jillybean said, quickly.

  It was there for only a flash, but Deanna saw hurt register in his eyes and for a few minutes the dominant personality in the car was not the West Point graduate, but the seven-year-old.

  "My dad drove me like that before and I don't think it would right," she said, letting him down easily.

  "I guess I understand," Grey said, kindly. "Was your dad a good man?"

  "Yes. He was the bestest person ever," Jillybean remarked. "And the bravest."

  Grey nodded. "I'm sure he was." This little exchange had Deanna doubting her paranoia.

  The fugitives in their convoy of trucks gained the bridge gates and were admitted far quicker than before. The gate-captain took control of the bridge crossing fee, which Neil had loaded in a separate truck and just like that, the secondary gates were opened and they drove onto the bridge.

  At first the going was slow. The five-ton truck could barely squeeze past all the cars obstructing the road and more than once there was a scrape of metal followed by a curse from Grey. This lasted until they were halfway across and then the road opened up completely.

  "That's different," Grey remarked.

  "That's better!" Jillybean said. "Weaving all around makes my stomach hurt and so does being in this sort of truck. It smells like the army and that's not goodest sort of smell if you ask me."

  Absently, Grey corrected her in a slow voice, "That's not best sort of smell." His attention was focused far down at the other end of the bridge. "Something's not right. There are vehicles heading this..."

  He stomped on the brake suddenly and the truck shuddered to a halt. From the back Deanna could hear worry and fear in the voices of the passengers—she felt the same as Grey grabbed his M4 and swung out of the truck. After looking back the way they came, his face sank.

  "It's a trap," he said. "The River King is going to make his money back after all."

  Deanna climbed down to see the bad news for herself. Grey was right, they were being hemmed in by frightful looking army vehicles each with a giant looking black gun on top. Just like that all her worst fears came rushing back to overwhelm her: she'd be passed around from man to man, gang-raped, beaten, and shackled before being sold back to the Colonel, where he would hang her by her thumbs over the river to be eaten alive by the zombies.

  Understandably, she began to hyperventilate; her head started to spin and her legs suddenly felt too weak to hold her up. Grey caught her before she fell. For a second she felt safe and warm, but then her mind kicked in and she hissed, "Don't touch me, you filthy pig."

  He didn't speak though his jaw worked like he wanted to.

  Neil came rushing up, holding Eve in his arms. "What the hell is this?" he demanded. "He reneged on his deal? But…but why?" No one had an answer. They just stared in disbelief as the River King's men piled out of the vehicles and got in position to fight.

  Their choices seemed to be either surrender or be slaughtered. Neil turned in desperation to Jillybean who stood holding her zebra tucked under one arm—she looked more annoyed than afraid. "Jillybean? Can you see a way out of this?"

  "Do these sort of trucks float?" she asked. "We could drive it off the bridge and float down river, if they do."

  "They don't float," Grey told her. He glanced down the bridge where the River King's men were taking up positions, and grunted. "But we do." He went to the rail and looked down at the Mississippi where the zombies drifted lazily by.

  "I'm jumping," he said, sliding his M4 across his back.

  "Are you crazy?" Neil asked. "That's like jumping from six floors up...and...and you do see the zombies all over the place, right? Grey, I've been in that river. They'll swarm you in seconds."

  "What are my choices, Neil? We can't fight; they have at least two, 50 caliber machine guns, we wouldn't stand a chance. If I'm captured I'll be forced to battle in the arena. Think of how many innocent people I'll kill." Grey shook his head disgustedly.

  Just then a bullhorn sounded from the west end of the bridge. "Lay down your weapons and come forward in single file."

  Neil raised a polite finger to them and said, "Just a second."

  "You should tell them to go fuck themselves," Grey said in an angry low tone. He was staring at the water and Deanna could see the intense fury in his eyes that was driving him.

  "Don't do it, Grey," Neil said. "It's not worth..."

  Right in the middle of his sentence Grey climbed up on the rail, paused for half a second and then dove. Everyone, including some of the River King's men, rushed to the edge of the bridge to watch him strike the river only a few feet from a zombie. In seconds the beasts were swarming all over him. He went down and didn't come back up.

  The bridge was altogether quiet for the span of a minute as everyone stared down at the black water.

  "Grey, damn it," Neil said in a voice that cracked. He grabbed his face with both hands and squeezed as hard as he could and hissed. "Son of a bitch! No one else jump! Get away from the rail, all of you." It seemed like a silly order; no one looked like they had the least interest in jumping.

  Yet looks could be deceiving. Everyone huddled together, many crying, all stunned by this reversal of fortune, each knowing all too well what was in store for them. They were listless and dull eyed, looking like sheep penned up for slaughter. The newly escaped women prisoners were the worst. A few were on the cement curled up, unable to will their bodies to move.

  Only Deanna showed emotion beyond fear. There was a spark of hope in her eyes. Grey had drawn so many zombies to him that there was a huge section of the river clear of them, an area plenty large enough for her to jump into—if she had the mental strength to do so. It should have been easy for her; what lay below was absolutely terrifying and yet her destiny at the end of the bridge was far, far worse.

  She turned to Jillybean who was staring at the water, her eyes flicking at each floating body, searching for Captain Grey's corpse among them. "The trick is not to look down, right?" Deanna asked her.

  "No, the trick is not getting eated."

  "Yeah," Deanna replied. "That too."

  She grabbed her shotgun and jumped up on the rail and froze in place; the river seemed so dreadfully far away. She had never in her life been that high up without stout walls or strong glass keeping her safe. Fear paralyzed her, turning her grip to iron and she might have stayed there, clinging to the metal cable until the River King's men came and got her, but Neil tried to grab her and pull her back. It was the catalyst she needed: a man trying to touch her, trying to interfere with her decisions. She let go and stepped off the rail out into nothing, allowing gravity to take over.

  The wind shot up her body, whistling in her ears, chilling her and turning her flesh stiff and brittle so that when she finally struck the water, after what seemed to her like a fearfully long time, it felt like her skin broke like glass. Pain along every inch of her was immediate and shocking. The shotgun was ripped from her grasp with such force that the fingers on her left hand felt like they were torn from their sockets.

  A second after she hit, she was twelve feet below the surface of the river and sinking fast. The stunning pain in her body gave way to the natural fear of drowning and she began kicking hard to the surface. From below she saw the wallowing, half-dead corpses begin to turn toward where she had hit. In an instant she saw what would happen: they would swarm and overwhelm her, tearing chunks out of her flesh even as she drowned.

  Panic lent her strength.

  Deanna fought to the surface, took a huge breath and then began swimming as fast as she could for the western bank which wasn't far off. From behind, zombies surged after her while ahead more converged, swimming slowly with awkward undulations. She wasn't a great swimmer by any measure, but she was far better than the zombies and was able to slip thr
ough the closing ring and slog her way close to the river bank.

  Twenty yards away from it, her foot was just able to touch the river bottom which consisted of a million years of sludge and muck; that foot sank up to her ankle and would not budge from the suction. It held her as tight as if she had stepped in quick drying cement. On the plus side, she was able to keep her head out of the water; on the downside, her head, just out of the water was a magnet for zombies. Despite her predicament, screams from above drew her attention. The fugitives were pointing up stream at the most fearsome zombie Deanna had ever seen.

  It was huge and broad, every inch of it covered in muck and mud as if it had just surface from the bottom of the river from a hundred year hibernation. It came on faster than the others, too.

  Deanna ducked under the water and began clawing at the mud holding her ankle in place. It was free in seconds and then she was swimming like mad downstream, but too late. The zombie caught hold of her left boot and dragged her back, reeling her in like she was a two-pound bass. She went wild with fear, kicking at the monster with her other foot and thrashing around until it lost its grip.

  Once again she turned for the river bank, only to see that the delay had doomed her. There was a crowd of zombies between her and land, while just downstream another hundred beasts fought the current to get at her. She was trapped with the biggest and the meanest right behind her. Its breath was loud and its moan was like a warning to the rest to leave him to his feast.

  She had no chance whatsoever, yet instinct made her try. She tried to dodge back out into the river, but it caught her arm and spun her around. She tried to scream, but it shot out a filthy hand and gripped her around the throat. She tried to breath, but it pulled her under the black water of the Mississippi.

  Much later and miles downstream, she would slog out of the water, unrecognizable to the world, her moan joining with the other zombies in a hellacious chorus.

  Chapter 27

  Neil Martin

  Cape Girardeau, Missouri

  Neil's heart was in his throat when Captain Grey dove into the river. It seemed to die there when his friend didn't surface from beneath the hundreds of zombies that rushed in. And when Deanna went in next¸ he couldn't even watch. He went back to the second truck in line to get Eve's bottle and baby-bag. Then he was ready to surrender.

  "Anyone else want to jump?" he asked. No one looked up. "Then let's go. If you have weapons drop them.

  "Maybe we should fight," Michael Gates suggested.

  A smile of pained rueful amusement broke across Neil's face. All Michael's group had ever done was run and hide, and now that they were surrounded with fifty assault rifles pointed their way and no chance to live, he wanted to fight? "Wait until I'm off the bridge, if you don't mind."

  "You call this leadership?" Trigg asked. "This is what we voted for? Did we vote just to be led into a trap?"

  Neil sighed. "You want to be leader, Fred? Fine, you're the new leader. So…what's your big plan to get us out of here, Fred? Or is complaining all you're going to do?" Trigg began to mumble. "That's what I thought," Neil said. "Let's go, people. They're starting to get antsy."

  "Hands up. Hands up," the man with the bullhorn demanded. "Let's see those hands!"

  The fugitives walked the remaining hundred yards, some docilely, others stiffly, their anger or fear making them aggressive. Jillybean walked holding Neil's hand, looking around as if she was at the zoo. "I want you to find away to escape, Jillybean," Neil told her. "Maybe not right now, but whenever the opportunity presents itself."

  "Ok, sure. And I want you to escape too, Mister Neil. And bring Eve and Sadie along. That way we can be a family again. Tell me, how long can you hold your breath?"

  "Jillybean now's not the time…"

  "I can only hold my breath for like half a minute or so, but Captain Grey has to be able to hold his breath for like two or three minutes. I never saw where he came up and that's what means he swam way far down the river. He can be part of our family, too when we all escape."

  No one saw where Grey had come up, because he hadn't. Even then there were soldiers working their rifle scopes up and down the banks, searching for him. Neil knew they wouldn't find him, at least not in the traditional sense of being alive. It was a nasty, terrible thought and for some insane reason he wasn't experiencing a single emotion he could tie to his friend's death.

  As always he was blank inside.

  Except for Eve, who was taken from Neil, and Jillybean, the fugitives were thoroughly searched, stripped down to their underwear and generally handled roughly. Their hands were bound by zip-ties and then they were prodded off the bridge and toward the three story brick building, but before they reached it, Neil was pulled out of line and given his clothes back.

  "Where's he going," Trigg asked, suspiciously. "Did you make a side deal with the River King? Have you traded all our lives for yours?"

  "Tell him to shut up," Neil suggested to one of the guards. "And if he doesn't, no one will be too upset if he gets some of his teeth knocked out."

  "Maybe I'll knock your teeth out, pipsqueak," one of the guards said to Neil.

  Emotionless, Neil said, "Maybe, and maybe you know who I'm about to go see, and maybe when I'm done I won't be tied up and maybe I'll have my gun back and maybe I'll find you and shoot you in the face."

  He had said all this with such a deadpanned, matter-of-factness that the guard only muttered, "Maybe."

  As Neil expected, they brought him before the River King. "No need to glare like that, Neil," he said coming forward with a knife. He stopped right in front of Neil. "You put your trust in a man who sells slaves for goodness sakes. You really shouldn't be surprised." The knife wasn't any sort of threat to Neil, in fact he was all "threated" out. When he didn't react to the knife, the River King gave him a grin and cut his hands free.

  Neil rubbed his wrists, saying, "The amount of evil in some people always surprises me, but then again so does their stupidity. People will find out what you did. How do you think it will affect your bottom line when they find out you can't be trusted? Who will dare to cross your bridge when it gets out that innocent people are…"

  "But you aren't innocent," the River King spat. "All of you are fugitives from a form of territorial justice. You, Neil are the property of an upstanding citizen named Gunner. Just like all those hot young women you picked up belong to my friend, the Colonel. You see? Rather than destroying trust, I'm building alliances and that's what this world needs right now. Stable city-states that can grow and prosper. It's really the only hope for mankind."

  A lot of choice words came to Neil's mind, but he did not give in to the temptation of voicing them. Instead, he only asked, "So why are you telling me this? Am I supposed to forgive you? Is that what you want? Or do you just need me to agree that, yes you are the world's greatest humanitarian, saving the world one execution at a time."

  "No, don't be silly. I don't care about your opinion of me, but I do care about Sadie's. As you might expect, she did not take the news of your re-capture very well. In fact I had to tie her up. She's like her mother when it comes to her temper. It's one of the reasons why I left in the first place."

  "You want me to help her to like you?" Neil had to laugh at this and it was some minutes before he bothered to control himself.

  "I am serious," the River King said. "And it would be for her own good. She has two choices: one, she makes life unbearable for me until I ship her off to that fucking Russian in New York who will skin her alive, or two, she realizes that what I did was really to protect her from an ill-thought out adventure across the country."

  Neil blinked at what he was hearing. "You do realize that what you are saying to her is that you protected her and if she doesn't acknowledge and appreciate it you'll kill her."

  "No, that's what I'm saying to you. She won't know about New York until her behavior makes it necessary for her to know about New York, which, with your help, hopefully won't ever happen."
>
  Neil was thoughtful for moment, brooding over everything that had happened that day. When he looked up to the River King it was with calculating eyes. "I want something out of this deal."

  "You're helping to save Sadie. Don't you think that is something?"

  "I'm talking about something for me, not for both of us," Neil insisted. "I want Eve and Jillybean to go free."

  "No way. Jillybean will be worth a fortune in New York and I'm willing to bet what's left of those idiot Believers would pay quite a bit for the baby."

  "Then just Jillybean," Neil replied. He knew exactly what the one quality the little girl possessed that would make her so valuable in the slave market of New York and it wasn't her intelligence. Her virginity would be auctioned off and she would end up a sex slave at the age of seven. Eve, on the other hand, would be revered, making it an easy choice to ask for Jilly's freedom.

  "No," the River King said.

  "Good luck with your daughter, then. I suspect you will need it," Neil replied, calmly.

  The king's brows knit together in anger for the duration of a few beats of his heart, but then he smiled. "You drive a hard bargain. Fine, I'll free Eve. Sadie will watch her. That should keep her calm if anything will."

  Neil took what he could get. "Eve it is."

  Their pact sealed, Sadie was carried in and not only was she bound hand and foot, she was gagged as well. Still she bucked and grunted.

  The River King rolled his eyes. "Enough with the theatrics! Neil wants to talk some sense into you. So if you'll settle down we can…Jesus!" Far from settling down she went more berserk, thrashing so much that her guards dropped her.

  "Sadie, stop," Neil commanded, looking her square in the face. She stopped immediately. "Your fath…I mean the River King is releasing Eve to you. It will be up to you to raise her." Her dark eyes narrowed and she made a single grunt.

  "Because, I told him I would talk to you for him if he did." She started to shake her head angrily and he added, "I'd like our last conversation to be a pleasant one."