Jillybean looked around as if there were spies that might overhear. “It’s a voice no one knows about. The voice you only use when no one’s around. Everyone has a…no, Ipes. I’m talking, now shush. Everyone has one, that’s what my mom says. I mean she used to say.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Sadie said.
Neil glanced in the mirror and agreed, “I don’t have one either. Do you, Jillybean?”
“Yes. But I already sang.” She turned pink and held the zebra in front of her face. “Though I guess I could again if you all didn’t look right at me. It’s sort of embarrassing.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Sadie said, patting her knee. “What are you going to sing?”
She had expected another kiddie song, instead Jillybean sang Yesterday by the Beatles. It was absolutely haunting. Her voice held the accumulated grief of a lifetime of pain and as she sang the car went dead quiet. It stayed that way long after she hummed the very last bar.
Sadie had to blink back tears. “Could you sing it again?”
“Could I sing a different one?” Jillybean asked. “Something happier?” When everyone agreed she launched into a medley of Christmas songs that took them all the way west to Hagerstown.
It was an old town with lots of brick buildings, mature trees, and even more mature zombies. The narrow streets were crammed with toothless, balding, wrinkled, grey creatures. The sight of them stopped Jillybean’s singing, cold.
“This is weird,” Sadie said, flinching back as the first octogenarian zombie tried to gum her window. It left a long streak on the glass.
“Maybe this part of the state just had an older population,” Neil said.
“But where are all the young zombies?” Sadie asked. “There should be some. Not that I want them around. I’m just curious.” No one could answer the question adequately and all were glad when Neil was able to turn the Explorer south onto I81.
“Other than the zombies, that was a pretty little town, didn’t you think?” Neil asked after a few minutes, as always trying to put a positive spin on everything. He didn’t get any takers on his question. Everyone looked a little ill—Neil had been forced to run over a number of the aged zombies and their bones had cracked with the sound of someone stepping on a bag of pretzels.
“At least they…at least…” Neil paused, looking into the rearview mirror. His eyes went huge.
“What is it?” Sadie asked, whipping her head around. Hagerstown was quickly fading in the distance, but there was something moving and seeming to grow, far down the road. It was a black spec on the highway that soon was close enough for them to make out: it was the bounty hunter’s black Jeep.
“Oh crap!” Neil cried, flooring the Explorer. It was fairly speedy for its size, however Neil wasn’t the best driver; when an obstacle presented itself, he would hang on the brake a quarter second too long, and he was slower on turns than the Jeep. Neil also had an issue with running over zombies. Sometimes he was forced into plowing straight over them and sometimes he would slow down to get around them. Unintentionally, he was creating a lane behind him for the hunter zip right through. In no time it became obvious that the hunter would catch up.
“Neil, what are we going to do?” Sadie asked. In her mind the obvious thing to do would be to give herself up so no one else would get hurt. They had only a single shotgun between them and who knew what sort of weaponry the bounty hunter possessed. Likely a machine gun of some sort, but even if he had only a deer rifle he could shoot them down from a distance. Their shotgun was practically useless after about forty yards.
Neil knew all of this as well. His face was lined with misery and fear; he could only shrug. “I don’t know.”
“You keep drive fast,” Nico said, pointing forward. “You drive and maybe we get lucky.”
“No,” Jillybean said. “That’s stupid. Take the next exit, Neil. When we make the turn, Nico and I will switch places.” Her tone was curt and her words clipped as if she didn’t want to waste time or breath.
“Why?” Neil asked. “What good…”
“Exit in one mile,” she said, snapping her little fingers and pointing. “Face forward or you will miss it.”
Sadie eased back away from the little girl, looking at her blue eyes and not seeing Jillybean in them. She got a queer feeling being so close to her. “Hey, Jillybean? It’s going to be ok.”
“No. It’s not ok,” she snapped, turning to look back behind them. “You have us blundering about like idiots. Did it take any brains to realize that the bounty hunter could just sit up near the junction of I-70 and I-81 waiting for us to come by? He’s like a spider and you had her singing her way right into his trap. You’re going to get her killed, don’t you see that?”
Now Sadie felt cold. This wasn’t Jillybean. With a quick yank, she snatched the zebra from Jilly’s stiff fingers. The little girl blinked slowly. “What are you doing with Ipes?” she asked, confused.
“Oh, honey, I think Ipes was sort of controlling you,” Sadie said. “You were saying things that didn’t sound like you.”
“I was?” she asked, shaking her head gently. “I don’t think I was.”
“You were, trust me,” Neil said, turning off the exit. “But maybe you should’ve waited to do that, Sadie because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. Do you?”
“Uh-uh,” Sadie replied. She glanced to Jillybean and asked, “Do you know what we’re supposed to do next?”
“Next about what?” Jillybean replied, looking completely baffled.
“Give her back the zebra,” Nico said. He was clearly nervous, frequently wiping his hands on his jeans so the shotgun he was holding wouldn’t slip.
Sadie pulled the zebra away further. “I don’t think so. That was too weird. And we don’t need Ipes. You and Jillybean switch seats.” After they did, everyone but Neil looked to Sadie for what to do next. The Jeep was half a mile back and just coming off the exit.
“What do I do?” Neil demanded. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel and his right foot alternated between stomping the gas and cramming down on the brake as he followed a winding secondary road.
“I don’t know! Try to lose him.” It was all Sadie could come up with and within a minute it was obviously the wrong choice. The Jeep gained a quarter of a mile as Neil took one turn after another. The land was green, hilly, and thick with trees, however there really wasn’t any place to hide since they kicked up a fine trail of dust wherever they went.
In desperation, Sadie handed the zebra to Jillybean. “Don’t let him take control, Jillybean! Just ask him what we do next.”
Her eyes bugged. “He says to take the next turn and stop hard.” This seemed like the craziest thing possible, but it had been ingrained into them to listen to Ipes. The little girl then turned to Nico as the car shuddered to a stop. “Get in the cargo area and break the glass with the end of the shotgun.”
In a flash Nico was in the back hammering the glass until it rained sharp crystals. Jillybean surveyed the distances as the roar of the Jeep came closer. “Back up! We have to be closer.”
Neil threw an arm over the seat and backed up until Jillybean grabbed him. Almost at the same time, the Jeep bounced around the corner; it was twenty feet away by the time it slammed on its brakes.
“Shoot the windshield!” cried Jillybean to Nico. Thunder shook the Explorer and then Jillybean was shaking Neil and screaming: “Drive! Drive!” Nico fired twice more and then the road took a turn. The air smelled of hot sulfur and their ears rang from the blasts.
“Where do I go?” Neil screamed as if the hunter were still right on their tail still. He was nowhere to be seen at the moment.
“Take your next left,” Jillybean said. “We have to get off these back roads. Ipes thinks all the dust we’re kicking up will allow the hunter to track us.”
Sadie sat shaking in her seat shaking, feeling the sweat of her fright cool on her neck. “Did you get him?” she asked Nico.
He s
hrugged. “Maybe. I shot windshield; now he cannot see so well. Maybe I got tire too, but I do not know.”
They took the next left so that they were heading roughly parallel to the highway a few miles to the east. No more roads branched off of it and Jillybean began to get nervous. “Ipes says we can’t stay on this road. He thinks the bounty hunter may try to get to the highway, drive ahead and cut us off. We have to get to the highway before him.”
Neil gestured all around: farm country on the left, forest on the right, more of the same ahead of them, except a distant water tower suggesting a town a few miles away. “That’s great but I don’t see a sign for the highway.”
Jillybean pointed to the left across a field. “It’s that way. Go that way.”
“Hold on!” he cried, before turning the wheel and taking down a wire fence. The ride was jarring. It felt like it was going to rattle the fillings right out of Sadie’s teeth and all the shaking made her realize that she had to pee. There would be no stopping, however.
In minutes the highway was in front of them and Neil really had to speed up to crush through the heavier fencing there. He did so with a giddy smile. “Next stop: Atlanta!” he said.
No one believed his enthusiasm. They stared out the back window waiting for the return of the bounty hunter. Not a hundred yards past the Martinsburg exit they saw the black Jeep a good mile and a half behind. “Do I go back to that exit?” Neil asked, slowing slightly.
“No,” Jillybean told him. The Jeep was missing its windshield. Paper and trash were whipping round the camouflaged driver. “We’ll lose too much of our lead. Ipes thinks we should be able to outrun him if Mister Neil will stop using the brake so much.”
The hunter was a very good driver and Neil hadn’t improved in the last few minutes. Again the Jeep began to close. “He’s got a gun!” Sadie screamed. The black barrel of an M4 came to rest on what remained of the windshield. When the Jeep closed to a quarter of a mile, fire seemed to leap from it and the Explorer shuddered and slewed to the left.
Nico returned fire, but a shotgun was useless at such a long range. Bullets thumped into the Explorer at a steady tok-tok-tok. Two traveled all the way through the vehicle to shatter the front windshield and more took out the mirrors and sent pieces of dash flying. Neil hollered for everyone to get down—Sadie threw herself into the footwell just in time as holes started appearing in the back of the seat she had just been in.
“Holy crap!” Neil screamed as a new sound erupted: Bam! Bam! Bam! This was coming from in front of them. In the face of logic, Sadie popped her head up in time to see an army Humvee sitting across the highway. It seemed to be spitting fire from every window and when the bullets passed, the air shrieked as if in pain.
Chapter 23
Sarah
Washington DC
With the knowledge that the bounty hunter was going west, Sarah and Mayor Artie cruised south on I-95. Artie drove for the first half hour. During those thirty minutes he proved as unsafe as anyone Sarah had ever driven with, and that included a number of falling-down-drunks and a sixteen-year-old who had been in four crashes before she had her license a full year.
His lunacy and paranoia made him see enemies in everything, from wire-guided robot-crows, to satellites and drones hidden in clouds. In order to avoid these mirages, he would swerve dangerously left and right, or he would speed up to “lose” his pursuers. She drew the line when he wanted her to use the .38 to shoot the clouds.
“How about I drive?” she said when she couldn’t take it anymore. “They will never expect it.”
As a passenger he was nearly as bad.
He wouldn’t let them drive under power lines, period. This forced them into many annoying and time consuming detours. Telephone wires were easier to slip past; all he had to do was wrap his head in his coat. He became so difficult that she looked forward to the next set of telephone lines.
“Are they gone?” he asked, his voice muffled by a sweat-smelling winter parka.
“Not yet,” she lied. “You better stay hidden.” She had fifteen minutes of peace before the heat forced him to come up slowly. When he looked at her through slitted eyes, she said, “Drones,” by way of explanation.
“Right. The drones know. We have to be careful with the drones. I vetoed all the drones when I was mayor. We were drone free. But we weren’t chip free. You still have yours. We got to get it out of you before we get there. And the wires. You have the wires.”
“We will, don’t worry,” she replied, trying to give him a smile. Smiling hurt her face so she kept it to a minimum. The mayor of Easton never smiled. His expressions only varied between the two poles of crazy and extra crazy. His wild hair and the abstract version of a beard he sported didn’t help.
With a glance in the mirror, Sarah realized that she wasn’t far behind him in the escaped-lunatic-looks department. Her own hair was singed frizzy in spots and, while the blisters on her face were healing, her skin had begun to peel in long sheets. “I look like a leper,” she moaned.
Artie didn’t disagree—a bad sign.
At the next set of power lines, Sarah wanted to make an excuse and stop at another salon, however they were on the outskirts of Washington and Artie wouldn’t allow it.
“The government!” he hissed, holding his coat up to his face. “This is Washington for God’s sake! They’re here. Think of the beams. Can’t you feel them peeling away your skin?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Then don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop. You should see your face.”
“Yeah,” she said, glumly. A minute later she was forced to stop whether she wanted to or not. They were on the beltway trying to run the ring around the city when they came upon a horde of zombies; Sarah guessed there couldn’t be less than ten-thousand of them. They had pulled down the highway fences and were migrating from the west, into the city.
“The beams!” Artie cried out. “See what they’ve done.”
Sarah reached out and grabbed him. “I see and if you don’t shut up they’re going to see us as well.”
Artie paid her no attention. He was focused on the thousands of slow-paced zombies stretching across their view. Before she knew it he had climbed out of the car. “Go back,” he yelled at the zombies. “Go back. You’re heading right for the beams.”
With the sun sending a fierce glare off the windshield, the zombies hadn’t been aware that humans were in the car. Now that Artie was out of it and waving his arms, they couldn’t help but notice. In a second, zombies by the thousands were charging right at the two of them.
“Get back in the car, Artie,” Sarah said as calmly as she could. The zombies had a hundred yards to cover. There was still time. “Get in the car or I’ll leave you. I swear to God.”
He walked away from her flat-footed and stiff-legged as though his body was in rebellion against the lunacy. He turned his head as he walked and berated Sarah, “They need us. The beams, Janice, you never ever consider the beams. Can’t you see that those people are coated with them?”
Her mouth fell open. He was going to die right in front of her, and it wasn’t going to be an easy death either. The crowd of zombies roared and screamed in a manner Sarah hadn’t seen before. Do I leave him to die? she wondered. The easy answer: Hell yes, came to her quickly and without actual thought on her part.
But what of New Eden? How was she going to get in without him? There was the Noah’s Ark rule she had to consider. Coldly she rationalized that she had to save Artie because she needed him. He was there to serve a purpose. Yes, he would likely die, and that was just ok with Sarah, as long as he died for the right purpose—her purpose.
She gunned the truck, raced past Artie and yanked it hard over so that she was between him and the zombies. They were forty yards away.
“Get in!” she cried.
“No, the beams,” he replied in proper lunatic fashion. He tried to go around the truck but she spurted it forward a few feet to cut him off.
This stopped Artie. He stared at the leading elements as they came closer. When they were twenty yards away he turned to Sarah and said, “Are you sure? They don’t look like government.”
Ten yards. Sarah tried to keep the fear out of her voice. “They’re undercover, Mayor. The government never looks like the government, right?”
Five yards. “I see it now! That woman has a lab coat on...”
The zombies crashed up against the truck and it rocked. For a frantic second, Sarah feared that they would upend it. Instead, they beat at it with their hands and fists, and, in one case, a head. Some foul creature that had once been a perfectly ordinary woman repeatedly smashed her face against Sarah’s window.
“Get in,” Sarah screamed.
“They’re scientists,” Artie said, sounding dumfounded. He stood in the crook between the door and the truck body, but made no move to get in. “They must be controlling the rest somehow.
Sarah’s window made a crackling sound that could be heard in spite of all the banging. “Jeeze!” she cried in a high voice. The window had cracked beneath the power of the fists. The zombies were pouring around the truck and out of desperation she jumped the vehicle forward three feet, dragging Artie along more by accident than by design.
It was a fortuitous accident. For some reason, the momentum of the truck and his body, prompted Artie to climb in and shut the door just as the beasts circled them completely. Now the truck truly began to rock. It felt like a dingy on a violent sea.
“You were right about the government,” Artie said. Finally fear seemed to have seeped into his addled mind. He picked up his length of pipe and sat clutching it in both hands. “They were trying to coat us with the beams so that we would become like them. I know.”
The Apocalyse Outcasts Page 19