After a bit, Jillybean asked, “What do you want to talk about?”
“Me? Nothing really. I just like having you close, that’s all. You really need to be around people more. If you ever feel like talking, you can come to me. Or if you’re scared or...or confused about what’s going on, I want you to find me and we’ll talk it out.”
Nico, who walked with ponderous steps on Sadie’s other side, cleared his throat quietly and said, “Kraslvaya, you should not speak. We must listen for approach of enemies.”
“Crazy-what?” Jillybean asked. “What does that...”
Sadie made a noise to quiet Jillybean, before answering in barely a whisper, “He calls me beautiful in Russian. But now we should be quiet like he says. That hunter could be breathing down our necks.”
Jillybean walked backwards for a number of steps. The forest was quiet save for a couple of crows jawing at each other. I don’t think the bounty hunter is breathing down our necks, Ipes said. He can be stealthy or fast, but he can’t be both at the same time. However, if he is tracking us, we are making it easy for him.
“Yeah,” agreed Jillybean. “We should go that way,” she told the others pointing to the right—with her brains jumbled from the crash, she couldn’t tell north from south. To the right the trees of the forest stood close to each other and there was a goodly amount of kudzu and other scrub that reduced visibility.
With Sadie and Neil lagging from their burden and Nico injured, they took Jillybean’s advice without question. They walked with their feet forward, but with their heads turning back and their ears pricked for the slightest telltale sign of someone following. All they heard was the low moans of zombies from somewhere in the forest. The sound grew as they walked until even brave Sadie suggested they go in a different direction.
“But I thought we wanted to find another car or truck,” Jillybean replied, confused. “Zombies stay near people places. Since we’re hearing more of them it means we’re close to being civilized.”
“But...” Neil said, looking a little green. “But we’re in no state to fight zombies.”
“Yeah, that’s why we gotta be real careful,” Jillybean said. She left Sadie’s side to scurry in front of the others by a dozen paces, leading the way through the bramble, where their ability to see and be seen dropped to a few yards. Zombies were a perpetual fear of hers, but they weren’t her only fear.
“Ipes, what does poison ivy look like?” she asked under her breath.
He considered for a while, dredging her memories, until he found what he was looking for. Clusters of three, let it be, he recited. Your Uncle Mitch said that once when he went with you and your daddy on a nature walk.
“But what’s it mean?”
You have to look out for plants with three leaves, I think.
Jillybean gazed about her and then shook her head. “That can’t be right because there’s a bajillion leaves on every plant. There’s none with just three...”
Through a break in the trees she saw movement and instantly forgot her worry over the poison ivy. Instinctually she went bunny: slinking down and freezing in place; she also remembered to put a hand out to the others. They stopped and although Neil and Sadie tried to be quiet, easing their load down to the ground, the pole creaked and the water jug thumped in a human-sounding manner.
The sound attracted something no longer human. Jilly saw the zombie, a cranky-looking, snaggle-toothed, old hillbilly with grey skin that ran with yellow pus. Before she knew it, she had a magic marble in hand, and after kissing it she heaved well beyond the zombie where it plunked off a tree.
The zombie turned on the spot. She threw a second one and when the beast moved off to investigate the sound, Jillybean slunk through the brush after it to see what it was haunting. A little further on, the bramble gave way to open forest which ran right up to a few decrepit old “dwellings.”
Two of the buildings were trailer-homes , one of which was cracked in two right in the middle, and the third was little more than a shack that looked to have been constructed of pure rust. Its walls and canted roof might have been sheet-metal at one time, now it was dull-orange and flaking. Hanging from a jagged shard of the rust was a No Trespassing sign.
There didn’t seem to be any reason to trespass. Jillybean, after sounding the word out on the sign and deciphering its meaning, turned back to the others. “We should go around. There’s no cars or anything.”
She led them away from the hillbilly zombie and the hillbilly homestead, circling wide around it. They had been in the forest over an hour, in spite of this she made no more noise than a mouse; the others were loud and slow. Neil was out of breath and huffed constantly under the strain of his burden. Sadie kept switching the pole from shoulder-to-shoulder and stumbled over every root. Nico had to hang onto trees to keep himself up; he had begun to moan, zombie-like.
With their strength beginning to fail, Jillybean again led them straight downhill until finally they came upon a two-lane road. With sighs of relief the three adults collapsed and lay panting.
What are they doing? Ipes demanded. They can’t rest right here! Are they crazy?
“Uh, Mister Neil?” Jillybean asked, with her hand in the air. “We can’t stay here out in the open. Not even for a rest. We should at least hide behind those bushes.”
Neil nodded and started to get up, but Sadie didn’t budge. “We can’t go any further,” she said. “Look at Nico’s arm. The bullet must have hit a vein or artery or something.”
They all crowded round the ashen-faced Russian. He had been shot through the left bicep and the arm, below the wound, was dark and sopping wet with blood. When he mumbled something about being cold, even Jillybean knew the man was in deep trouble.
“Ok...Ok. It doesn’t look so bad,” Neil lied. “Here’s what we’ll do...uh, I’ll go look for a car and you, Sadie, stay here and keep pressure on the wound. Jillybean, I want you to guard them.”
She said she would, but eyed the axe with trepidation as soon as Neil left. It was one thing to let it bruise her shoulder as she walked through the forest, it was another thing entirely to try to use it against a real, "live" zombie.
You won’t have to use it, Ipes told her. Sadie is right here. I’m pretty sure it’ll be ok if she releases pressure for a minute.
Jilly wasn’t keen on “pretty sure.”
Thankfully Neil came back before Jillybean was put to the test. He came jogging up and said something in an overly-breathy way so that all anyone could really understand was the word car. Sadie questioned him, but he only shook his head before he hefted the battery up by its handle and left, walking leaned way over because of the weight of the thing. Soon, he was back for the gas can, and sooner, he was back in a teal-colored Tercel.
Even to Jillybean it looked frightfully small.
“It gets great mileage,” Neil said, putting their meager belongings in the tiny trunk. “And its safety rating is better than you’d expect.”
“Is it safe against zombies?” Sadie asked.
“It was our only choice,” Neil told her. “Everything else sat on flat tires. Now, let’s take a better look at that arm.”
Interested in all things as she was, Jillybean squatted right next to Neil and watched as he tore away the bloody shirt. She started asking questions, which was ok, however, when she pointed out that the wound looked like raw hamburger, Neil went from sweaty and pale to sweaty and pale green. She was ordered to stand guard.
Her explanation that her guard was never down didn’t help and she didn’t get to see what a tourniquet was or how it would stop the bleeding. Even Ipes didn’t know what it was.
It helped one way or the other and, after Nico was squished into the backseat, they left, heading as southward as Neil could manage on the winding mountain road. Their idea was to find a town and get a proper bandage on Nico’s arm and maybe some medicine, if that was an option, however the road seemed laid out so as to avoid towns.
For three hours they dr
ove, stopping at the ramshackle little houses they would find tucked up in the woods or sunk down in the hollers. They scrounged gas, a clean ace bandage, and bushels of wild fruit, but saw nothing bordering on civilization until the heat of the afternoon was at its height.
They rounded over the top of the one of the millions of hills that made up the Appalachians and saw the tiny town of Elkins, West Virginia, down below them. It was exactly what they were looking for, but they didn’t take the turn that would lead directly into the town. From one of the many chimneys that poked up from one of the many houses, a little ribbon of grey smoke drifted into the air.
The same thoughts went through their minds: Was this a trap? Had the bounty hunter got there before them and set an innocuous cooking fire alight in order to lure them in? Maybe it was bandits, or slavers.
Without discussion, Neil kept to the high road and put Elkins in their rear view mirror.
This is crazy, Ipes said. We’re too afraid to stop, when we should be too afraid to go on. They are going to be waiting on us.
“Who is they?” Jillybean asked. In her heart she knew, and that meant he knew that she knew.
The hunter or the colonel’s men or maybe even Abraham; no one has even considered that he might have heard about the bounty, too. And that’s why this is all so crazy. As always, we’re being far too obvious. We keep traveling south.
“Which way should we be traveling to get to Georgia?” Jillybean asked, watching the trees as they drove; she had never seen such a beautiful, lush forest in all her seven years.
That’s just it we shouldn’t be going to Georgia. Practically everyone knows we came up from the CDC and everyone knows Abraham has Sarah’s baby, thus everyone knows that’s exactly where we’ll be going.
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice when…” she stopped, hoping Ipes wouldn’t catch on to what she had been about to say.
When it comes to family? Ipes asked. Oh, you poor girl. Please, don’t get too attached. Look at them. Obediently she glanced at the three adults and saw that they were as ragged a group as she had ever seen. They aren’t going to make it. They aren’t survivors like you. They’re going to die one-by-one and you’ll be all alone once again.
“I’m not afraid of being alone,” she said, defensively.
Ipes sniffed derisively at this. I know what you’re afraid of. Deep down you’re afraid of what Abraham will do to a little girl like you. And you’re afraid of the slavers in New York who deal in virgins. Remember, I was there when we overheard Mister Neil talking about the rumors. What do you think will happen to you when all of your so-called family gets killed down in Georgia? What is…
Just then Sadie, who had been watching Jillybean’s side of the conversation with worry in her dark eyes, interrupted Ipes. “May I hold your zebra for a while?”
Ask her why she wants to? Ipes demanded. Jillybean fought the urge to ask. It wasn’t easy because, really, why did Sadie want Ipes? What was she going to do with him? Keep him forever? Throw him out the window? Hurt him?
“Jilly?” Sadie asked. Her concern was now more evident.
Ipes ignored the look. She’s not your family, Jillybean. She’s not your sister.
She could be, Jillybean thought. The little girl handed the zebra over without a word and then passed the back of her hand across her brow—it came away damp.
“You look a little pale,” Sadie said, putting Ipes out of sight.
“It’s just hot in here is all,” Jillybean said, failing to mention how her stomach had also been cramping during her talk with Ipes. It felt better to look out the window at the forest and not think about Ipes.
Chapter 25
Sarah
Washington DC
By the time Jillybean fell asleep in the Tercel with her forehead resting against the cool of the glass window, the muffler of Artie’s Ranger finally let go. Immediately, the engine roared out BLAATTT!
Sarah looked into the rear view mirror and saw the muffler. The leading edge of it had sunk inches deep in the skull of the zombie she had just run over.
It was a wonder the muffler had lasted as long as it had. Only God knew how many zombies she had plowed over in the last five hours or how many curbs she had banged up onto, or how many medians she’d had to cut across in order to save their lives. Everywhere they turned, zombies came at them.
Though it had never been classified as Black, Washington DC was a hellhole of epic proportions and had been so from the beginning of the apocalypse. Even after weeks of mayhem, during which live people were slowly outnumbered by the undead, limp-wristed politicians had refused to admit the obvious: that the nation’s capital had fallen, and thus the people were left to fend for themselves. Riots, street-fighting, and a last ditch effort to save the city by a doomed brigade of Marines, had left Washington in a state reminiscent of Stalingrad in ‘43.
More buildings had collapsed or burned to the ground than still stood, and the 2 X 2 Ranger proved a pathetic vehicle for such terrain. Sarah had already stopped twice for repairs. The first time was when a hunk of rebar from a mortared street had shredded one of her tires. The second time they had been nearly trapped by converging hordes when Sarah tried to blast through them. By then she had figured out that pure momentum was the only recourse when trying to get through so many bodies. She went heavy on the gas until they were clear, but then there came, from beneath the hood, a horrific shriek, as though the car had received some sort of mortal injury.
She kept going, simply because slowing wasn’t an option. When she felt she was “safe”, a term very loosely defined in Washington, she checked under the hood to find a stiffening, grey hand with a trail of stringy-looking veins caught up in the engine’s belts. Using Artie’s pipe she had pried it out and continued on her looping, circling, maddening way.
Now, with the muffler a useless hunk of metal in the road behind her and the engine roaring with even the slightest push of the gas, she felt it was time to get rid of the Ranger. It made such a racket that she knew she would attract unwanted attention from more than just the zombies.
Sarah found a row of burned out townhomes which had two things going for them: one, there weren’t hundreds of zombies roaming in every direction as in the rest of the city and, two, although the residences were mostly ash, the carports directly across from them were, for the most part, undamaged.
“We have to ditch your truck,” she said, nervously looking around. “Grab your stuff.”
As usual Artie didn’t go quietly. “I know this isn’t right. None of it. We have to go back to Easton before it’s too late!”
Sarah hoped her extreme irritation didn’t show on her face when she said, “But you forget that the government is controlling Easton with beams.” Normally the topic of beams would set him raving but in a harmless manner. She figured it was his way of coping.
“Beams, beams, beams!” Artie cried. “That’s all I ever hear out of you. It’s beams this and beams that. You know what? I don’t want to hear about the beams anymore.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t talk about beams,” Sarah said, as she got out of the truck, making sure to take the keys with her—she didn’t want Artie to drive off in his lunacy. They were a man’s set: they held four keys and nothing more. No bling, or extra keys to locks that were long gone, for the mayor of Easton. They reminded her of something that she had failed to take into account: “Here’s a new subject, how do you hotwire a car?” She had seen Ram do it, but the mess of wires beneath the steering column was daunting.
“Hotwire a car? Me? You want to know if the true and properly elected mayor of Easton can hotwire a car?”
“Yeah,” she replied without enthusiasm, already knowing the answer.
“It’s against the law!” Artie cried. “This is entrapment. I know. You’re trying to trap me, just like the government. You’re with them, aren’t you?”
Sarah turned away before rolling her eyes, but her groan was so loud he had to have heard. The day h
ad been so trying that she didn’t much care what he heard. He spluttered for a bit and ranted, however her mind was on a row of very nice, late-model cars that she had to choose from. Some were sporty, some fuel-efficient, and some were hefty SUVs. She tried the bigger vehicles first. All were locked and so she resorted to breaking one of the back windows to gain access to a honking big Lincoln Navigator that still had temp tags on it.
During this, Artie forgot about the possibly of her being part of the government and began a heated argument with an ash-covered zombie that had drifted out of the torched townhomes. He was screaming about private property rights and, once more, beams. Sarah didn’t waste time concerning herself with his safety. She reasoned he had somehow made it this far without any help from her and thus should be safe enough against a stray zombie or two. After all, he had his pipe: four feet of heavy metal; it was a scary weapon when he was worked up.
Turning from him, she grabbed a chunk of sidewalk that had cracked from the heat of the nearby fire and used it to bash open the plastic that covered the steering column below the wheel. When it finally fractured and dropped to the floor she sat back with a grimace.
“Shit,” she whispered at the sight of such elaborate and convoluted wiring. She had hoped that getting the engine going was simply a matter of exposing the wires and touching them, one to the other, until she had the right combination.
Fearful of getting shocked, she used her knife to strip away the least amount of the rubber coating from each. Gingerly, she began touching them to each other until eventually, the engine began to sputter. Pressing on the gas pedal, she fed it fuel and then giggled, feeling altogether clever when the engine turned over and began a fine humming.
In seconds she had thrown their gear into the SUV, next, she backed over the zombie pestering Artie and, while it squirmed and moaned with the weight of the Navigator crushing its legs, she asked Artie to join her.
“Only if we’re going back to Easton,” he said.
She lied easily, “Of course!”
The Apocalyse Outcasts Page 21