As army bases went Fort Campbell wasn't all that large, even so, they ran out of gas before they found the bunkers, spluttering to halt just in front of a line of barracks.
"Now what do we do?" Deanna asked.
"Simple, we find a car with gas," Grey said. He was about to hand her an M4 but when she hesitated he said, "Never shot one? It's easy." He went through the steps and then had her try it twice on her own. "Now hide it under your shirt. It's for just in case. For now we go as zombies."
"A gun I can't use, great."
"I don't like guns," Jillybean declared. She looked like she had been playing in the dirt. "I've made some mud. You can have some." They began daubing it on their faces until they were practically unrecognizable. When they were done they began to half-walk, half lurch slowly toward a row of parking lots that sat directly behind the barracks.
"More zombies," Deanna said, under her breath. "To the left."
"And more to the right," Grey answered right back. The beasts were coming down out of the buildings, perhaps alerted in some way as to the humanity of the little group. "You two go ahead."
Deanna was uncertain, but this time Jillybean listened to orders and led the pair toward a parking lot where a hundred cars sat growing old in the sun. Grey hung back, watching them; after only four steps, he saw what was attracting the zombies. Deanna's body was doing everything that she needed it to, but she had her head up and was looking back and forth. "Deanna! Hang your head. Stop looking around."
But it was too late. The zombies were converging. "Freeze," hissed Jillybean. She then just stopped and began moaning, her head hanging listlessly to the side. The two adults followed suit just as the first of many zombies came up.
Grey had to fight his hand which so desperately wanted to creep up under his torn up zombie shirt where his M4 sat. Only will power kept his hand in place. There were simply too many of the beasts for his weapon to make any difference. The zombies flowed all around the three, and then just stopped, acting confused even for zombies.
At least we aren't being attacked, Grey thought. That was the good news. The bad news was that as long as the stiffs weren't leaving it meant checking any of the cars and trucks in the parking lot was going to be impossible. He slowly looked around for a solution and finding one easily: this wasn't the only parking lot around.
With a slightly louder than normal moan and a brush up against Deanna, Grey started shambling away. He pushed his way through the crowd and saw out of the corner of his eye Deanna following a step back and a little to his right. He didn't feel the need to check on Jillybean; she understood zombies better than anyone.
Grey moaned and lurched for fifty yards before it dawned on him that the heavy sound of hundreds of zombies moaning hadn't decreased as it should have. Pretending to stumble he glanced back and saw that the entire company of zombies was following him. He stopped immediately, hoping they would keep going, but they stopped as well.
What the hell?
This had never happened before. Normally zombies did their own thing; normally they stood like dullards barely reacting to the world around them...except that is, when they didn't. Sometimes great migrant hordes swept across the country and no one knew why. Grey had to wonder if he was starting one by accident. Which led him to the question of what he was going to do about it. He had the patience to wait for the horde to break up, but what about Deanna? What he knew about her, the fact that she'd lived the sheltered life of a whore for the last six months, suggested she wouldn't hold out for very long.
The idea of making a run for it struck him. He had the speed and the stamina to run ten miles without an issue. He could get the whole crew of them to chase…but what would Deanna do if he started to run? Would she run, too? If she did that would be disastrous; she didn't look like she could run even a half mile. That left staggering over to the barracks and hiding inside where they would basically trap themselves for who knew how long.
He couldn't stay and he couldn't go, which left what? Not a single thing came to mind.
Chapter 32
Jillybean
Fort Campbell, Kentucky
"What do we do, Ipes?" she asked in a tone so low that even she could barely hear her words. The zebra was once again hanging from yarn tied about his midsection, tucked safely out of sight beneath her monster clothes.
The zombies are following Captain Grey. If we just stop we'll be safe.
"And what about Captain Grey and Miss Deanna?"
I'm sure we can think of some nice words at their passing. Jillybean reached up and squeezed him making him squawk, I don't know! I just know if we don't stop, we'll be killed along with them.
He was right about that. It was never safe to walk among zombies. She slowed her lurch to a gimpy stumble and in a matter of minutes all two hundred passed her by leaving her free and clear.
"We need a distraction." She had barely said the word before an idea popped into her head. Quickly she pulled off her top shirt and slid off her backpack. She pulled out the remote control car and the little controller. She then redressed, making sure to hide the controller under her shirt; not that she expected any of the monsters to notice.
"This should be fun," she said, letting the car shoot away at top speed.
She made it whirr right up along side the parade of zombies until it caught up to Captain Grey. Once there she turned a jaunty little circle with it and then had it buzz off, heading down to the next parking lot with all the zombies stumbling after in a great wave of undead humanity. Jillybean came up grinning.
"That was close," Deanna said, looking sick with relief.
"You did great," Captain Grey told her.
"Oh, it was all Jazzy-Blue," Jillybean deflected. "That's the name of the car. I just named her, she's very fast. She might be the fastest car ever made."
"But it was your idea," Deanna said. "We would have been goners if you hadn't saved us."
Jillybean was uncomfortable with too much praise and made an excuse to leave before any more was heaped on her. "Find us a car. I'll keep them busy," she said, heading to a fancy looking truck that had chrome running boards and a big grill in front. She climbed up it to stand on the roof. From there she could see the crowd of monsters marching on and Jazzy-Blue as a little dot far down the rows of parked cars.
"Oops. I let it go too far ahead." She brought the car back toward the monsters, making it juke back and forth to keep them interested.
Captain Grey and Deanna didn't go far in their search for a working vehicle. They went to the one under Jillybean's feet. It turned out to be perfect. It was late model with a new battery and a full tank of gas. "This place really is a gold mine," Deanna said as Grey broke a rear window and opened the back door.
"It's understandable," he said, squirming under the dash to inspect the wires. "While everyone else was hunkering down nice and safe, the soldiers were out fighting. They left everything behind to do it, too. I'd bet there's gas in every one of these."
Hot wiring the truck took only a couple of minutes. The little girl pied-pipered the zombies in a great big circle and then zipped Jazzy-Blue back at full speed. She scooped it up and set it once again in her back pack, but not before whispering, "Good job, Jazzy-Blue."
When she climbed into the truck she did so with trepidation. It was a soldier's truck, filled with old fast food wrappers and beer cans and a few girly magazines that made her curious and uncomfortable in equal parts. Seeing as the world was already trashed, she litter-bugged everything out into the parking lot. Everything, except a full can of soda that she found under the driver's seat.
"Is it still good?" she asked. No one knew, not even Ipes. That meant she had to be scientific about it—she took a sip. "It's warm, she said thoughtfully. "But it's yummy." She offered to share; Grey declined while Deanna only took a mouthful to be polite.
There was a gay atmosphere in the truck. They had food in their bellies, ammunition in their guns, and gas in their truck. The festive fee
ling ballooned when they found the munitions bunkers only ten minutes later. The doors were locked with very massive looking locks, but Captain Grey used the power of the truck to smash the doors open. He then spun it around to use the head lights to illuminate the dark interior.
"Is it supposed to smell like that?" Deanna asked, nervously. There was a sharp smell of chemicals wafting out of the earth covered bunker.
"Maybe you two should wait outside," Grey suggested. Deanna eagerly agreed, but over Ipes' protests, Jillybean stayed as Captain Grey went shopping for the second time that day. "Yes! This is what we want." The stacks of M112 demolition blocks were obvious; there were hundreds of them, enough to take down a dozen bridges.
He began explaining what they were as he loaded up the bed of the truck. "Each of these is composed of malleable C4. Malleable means you can bend it. It's a lot like soft clay."
"Aren't you ascared you might drop them and blowd us up?" she asked.
"Nope. We're perfectly safe. C4 is so stable that you could shoot a bullet into a block of it without setting it off. Blasting caps are needed for that. Those are like little bombs that set off the big bombs."
Grey grabbed all the green blocks he could fit in the back of the truck, pausing only to scratch his head and ask, "I wonder how much of this stuff it'll take to bring down a bridge?"
Jillybean could only shrug. He grunted and then moved on to the next thing on the list: blasting caps. They were small, grey snake-like things and he took a few crates worth. As well he grabbed a few hundred feet of detonation cord.
"Now all I need are the real good detonators," he said, cracking open crates and peering under their lids. She followed after him looking into the crates and marveling over all the different army things that had been left to rot. When she reached into one and pulled out a Claymore mine he smacked her hand and when she tried to ask about some of the other interesting items he refused to answer. His focus was on the detonators, everything else didn't matter to him.
"Most engineer units use timed fuses. We don't have the luxury to know exactly when we want them to explode so we need a remote control detonator, the kind the Special Forces boys like to play with."
After looking through every crate and growing cranky he eventually found them in a dusty little bin marked: Not For Use. "My ass," he said, thinking Jillybean couldn't hear.
When he had everything they needed, they went to test the C4. Jillybean was nervously excited and watched closely as he took a single block of explosive, jabbed a blasting cap into it, hooked the receiving end of the radio to it and set the whole thing against the concrete wall of a nearby drainage culvert.
"That's it?" she asked when he was finished.
"Yes and no. For our purposes, this will do the trick. When we get the charge ready for the bridge we'll branch the wire to each of the blocks. It should go up all at once. But let's see how this goes."
They joined Deanna who was sitting in the truck a hundred yards from the culvert. Despite the distance she had her fingers jabbed in her ears.
"Here we go," Grey said. He turned the transmitter to the on position, lifted a plastic guard and then pressed the button beneath. From so far away the explosion was a bit dull visually: a puff of smoke and some rocks flying. It was surprisingly loud, however.
"Yeesh," Jillybean said.
"I hope that was good enough of a test," Deanna said. "We'll have zombies here in no time."
"Let's see what sort of damage we did, first," Grey replied, looking happier than Jillybean had ever seen him. He almost seemed child-like beneath his rock hard exterior as he gunned the truck back to the culvert.
"You like this sort of thing, don't you?" Jillybean asked him.
"Blowing crap up?" he asked. "What's their not to like?"
She grinned in agreement. "I can't wait to blow up to the bridge. That'll be super cool."
His mood changed in a blink and he was right back to his growly old self. "Blowing up the bridge means we failed. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."
All three got out and looked at the damage done by the C4. Deanna and Jillybean were unimpressed. There was a hole about the size of a suitcase in the concrete. Grey was optimistic. "With what I have I can blow up the bridge five times over! Time for the next step, let's go build a boat."
It was about four in the afternoon and Grey became obsessed with getting back before sunset and yet he still stopped anywhere that looked like it sold boats or fishing supplies. Eventually he found what he was looking for: kayaks.
They had come across a number of kayaks on the west side of the river earlier that morning, but no one had thought they were a good idea because it was obvious the river zombies would swamp them with ease. At their looks of confusion, he said, "Since we don't have a pontoon, we can make one instead. I'll float the explosives on it and park it right up against the bridge support."
Once the kayaks were tied down over the explosives, Grey went in search of a wood pallet to act as the platform. One was easily found, while a True Value furnished the metal ware to bind it all together. A few miles north of the bridge he assembled his homemade pontoon and then went to work on the bomb.
Deanna kept watch from a healthy distance. Jillybean sat perched on the spare explosives watching Captain Grey. This, of course, nearly sent Ipes into a convulsion of worry.
How can you just sit on all that C4? It's enough to blow you up higher than the moon. What happens if you fart? You ever think about that? Jilly? Jillybean dear? Get off of it, please. Or at least let me go sit with Deanna. She looks awful lonely.
"Do what you need to do," Jillybean replied. Her mind was too focused on the bomb and the boat to notice that she had spoken aloud.
Grey suddenly seemed to realize he had just taught a little girl…a girl whose mental status had been in question only the week before, how to build a bomb. "You ok, Jillybean?"
"I'm fine."
"Maybe you should go keep Deanna company."
"No, I'm fine. I want to see what you mean by pigtailing the wires together."
"That wasn't a suggestion, Jillybean," he said. "That was an order, and you will listen to me."
Chapter 33
Captain Grey
Eastern Shore of the Mississippi River
Grey watched Jillybean walking away and wondered if he had made a mistake letting her watch him build the bomb or by sending her away. Or maybe there hadn't been a mistake at all. Just then he didn't know what to think, he was too caught up worrying over every detail of his plan. It was a simple plan even for him: hold the River King's bread and butter hostage until Neil and the rest of the fugitives were released.
"We'll also need our trucks and supplies," Grey said to himself, working the detonation wires together, twisting them around each other. "But what if he says no? What should my game plan be?"
It was a nagging fear in him that the River King would try to bargain and Grey had nothing to bargain with. He needed it all. Without the supplies they would be sixty wandering vagabonds. Without trucks they would be sitting ducks for the River King to come scoop them up. That meant he had to stick to his guns no matter what…and that meant he should at least consider the idea that the River King would just walk away from the deal.
"He'd let me blow up his bridge? There's no way unless he didn't think I would in the first place."
Grey would just have to convince him and for that he would need a second bomb. A glance at the sun told him he'd be working in the dark, something that was extremely dangerous. It would bring the zombies out of the woodwork.
"Jillybean!" he called. She ran over, her skinny legs pumping. "I need your help. Can you find something flat? Like a board…no, a desk drawer would be better. Something about this size." He held his arms about three feet apart.
She sped to the nearest house and came back a few minutes later lugging two different sized drawers. He picked the smaller one, and instructed her to stack ten of the C4 bricks together to form a pyramid in it.
"And put the blasting sticks in 'em?" she asked when she was done.
"Yes, just make sure that you set them deep enough."
Finished with the first bomb, he dragged the homemade pontoon twenty yards down to the river's edge where the setting sun cast a glow upon the zombies struggling to get at him. There was little chance of they would. The bank on this stretch of the river was slippery and steep and while he was as sure footed as a goat, they were clumsy and the slime covering their bodies made even the simplest things difficult for them, such as getting out of the water.
He launched the boat, sliding it gently down the embankment and then hitching it to a tree overhanging the water. He then hurried back to Jillybean who was squinting with the failing light trying to expose more of the wiring so the ends could be joined easier. She was trying to peel the rubber casing off the wire like a banana.
"That's the hard way," Grey told her. "If you cut gently all around the wire about an inch up and then pull, the casing will just slide right off."
He demonstrated and she then copied him almost perfectly. Together they stripped away the remaining wires and were almost done when a voice squawked loudly right next to them: "Jillybean?"
They both jumped in surprise until they realized what they had heard was coming from her pants. "It's Sadie!" Jillybean cried. She yanked the two-way radio off her hip and said, "Green this is Pink. I read you five by five. Do you read me?"
"Yes. This thing is louder than I thought. Hold on. Let me turn it down." There was some muted hissing and clicks and then she was back on. "How are you? You doing ok out there?"
"I'm doing good. We're building a bomb and I got cheese and crackers for dinner because Miss Deanna thought they were icky and Ipes says hi, and I got a remote control car named Jazzy-Blue that saved us from the monsters."
"Deanna?" Sadie asked in bewilderment. "Who's Deanna…and did you say bomb?"
Jillybean took a large breath to answer but Grey reached out and grabbed the radio from her. "What did I teach you about operational security?"
The Apocalypse Fugitives Page 31