Neil gazed around as the sky went from black to the deepest purple. There didn’t seem to be many places to hide a twenty-foot pontoon, not with the banks so steep. “We could cut some of the foliage overhanging the river,” he said, knowing right away that she would make that face of hers, the one that suggested he was an idiot. “Or…or we could…”
He trailed off. There was simply no hiding the boat on the river. There only choice was to sink the boat or somehow get it up on the bank. With Jillybean, the idea of purposely sinking a boat was hardly far-fetched. In fact, drawing the boat onto shore, as difficult as that seemed, was so minor league that he was sure she had a sinking in mind.
“We could fill the, uh pontoon things with water, sink the boat and then pump the water out when it’s time to go.” As his sentence ended, each word grew quieter and quieter. Her raised eyebrow was all that it took to kill the idea.
She then smiled a bit of a crooked smile, high on the left and sloping down to an embarrassed grin on the right. “We could do that, but we’d need an air-compressor. There might be one in the town, I guess.”
This was her way of saying: there might be one, but it would be a waste of time looking for one. “Or we could use that car battery to get a car moving and just drag the boat up. I think it might be easier, but I don’t know.”
Of course it would be easier, Neil thought. There were cars everywhere, but who knew where they’d find a compressor. There could be one in the local hardware store or it might have already been looted. And if they even found one, would pulling a boat out of the water really work? Would the engine run, would the electronics on the boat be ruined? Neil was pretty sure they would be and he was convinced that she knew it too.
“Or we could get a car going and pull the boat up, good plan Jillybean.”
The smaller river had a creek that flowed into it and the creek was just wide and deep enough to handle the pontoon. Its banks started as steep as the river, but gradually leveled off. When Neil found a spot that he felt he could climb without falling in, he tied the boat to a half submerged log and the two of them climbed up the slope to stand where farm country butted up against small town living.
The town wasn’t large and when they had trouble finding a suitable vehicle, Neil fretted that there wouldn’t be a hardware store either and suggested that they try somewhere else. However, Jillybean was certain the town would have everything they needed and pressed them on, though in no sense did they hurry.
There were zombies about, moaning here and there among the dark buildings.
As Neil was the one carrying the heavy car battery, it felt like forever before they found a decent truck. As Jillybean used the red-dot laser from one of the scopes she had taken from the Colonel’s arsenal to distract the zombies, Neil went to work switching out the truck’s battery, giving it a quart of gas and praying that the engine would turn over.
It did on the fifth try, just when the battery had begun to sag. In a flash, Jillybean jumped in and they pelted back the way they had come just as the sun cracked the sky.
With the rope from the pontoon, they pulled the boat clear of the creek. Neil worried that it would make a hell of a racket coming up, but it slid across the grass, making less noise than the truck. They did not need to take the boat deep into the underbrush. Thirty feet was all that was needed.
This time, Neil kept watch for zombies, while Jillybean raced around covering the tracks the boat had left. She then grabbed a number of explosives and weapons.
“Look at all this stuff,” she said in awe of the very weaponry she had taken earlier that night. The look in her eyes, a sort of manic joy, made Neil nervous.
“We probably don’t need all this stuff if we’re just hiding out for the day.”
The mania faded from her face and she took on a purposefully neutral expression that scared Neil even more. She was hiding something…something horrible. “Sometimes you need this much stuff,” she said. “You never know who’s watching.”
“Maybe we should get out of sight,” Neil said as he started glancing nervously around. Jillybean was, unfortunately right. You never knew who was lurking and what their intentions were.
The two found a house on the edge of town, which Jillybean fortified with bombs and booby traps in such a frightful way that Neil was afraid to even use the bathroom. He slept with a full bladder, his ears perking up with every sound.
Jillybean must have had full trust in her traps, because she slept deeply until after four in the afternoon when she hopped up, full of energy.
As Neil stared blearily around, his eyes red and scratchy, and his brain still in a fog, she went about the house dismantling her traps and talking nonstop about the dreams she’d had. They were so convoluted that he was quickly lost, and he found himself saying: oh,yeah? and really? whenever she paused for a breath.
“Yeah, it really was blue. Okay, I’m done with all the bombs. You can come out of the room. We can go get the weldering stuff now.”
“Hold on, I wasn’t hiding in there. I-I was just getting some different clothes to wear, you know so we can blend in with the monsters.” In truth, he didn’t want to be anywhere near those traps when he didn’t have to be; that was just being prudent.
She glanced down at her blue jeans and her white carnation-covered shirt and sighed. “Yeah, I guess that is a good idea.” It didn’t take her long to find a pair of scissors, but she didn’t use them on the outfit she had picked out. Instead she used the scissors, a stapler, some glue and some string to turn a green curtain and a brown coat she’d found in a closet into a very strange looking ghillie suit.
She was spiked and mottled and somewhat alien appearing. The zombies that had wandered into the front yard barely gave her a second glance though they did give Neil a very close inspection, causing Jillybean to zip her red dot at their feet to confuse them long enough for Neil to get into the truck.
They tooled into the central part of town and found a hardware store that was small but packed floor to ceiling in a maze of goods. “So far, I’ve found these little town stores carry practically everything,” she said, running the beam of her maglite around. “Who wants to drive an hour into Davenport just to get…” She squinted at the nearest item: an aluminum J-tube. “Uh, one of these things?”
She was not wrong and in no time, they stood in front of a fully stocked shelf of welding equipment. “Hmm,” she said, looking at a little boxy device. “We would need a generator with one of these and it’ll be loud. Better to go with straight fire, don’t you think, Mister Neil?”
He thought that all welding machines used fire, but was tired of feeling stupid around her and so he only said: “I trust you to pick out the right one. I’m sure you’ll do great.” She beamed at him and then forced him into a servant’s role. He lugged a heavy metal bottle of acetylene, another of oxygen, the welding torch, rod fillers, protective equipment and squares of precut metal out to the truck.
Once the items were brought back to the pontoon, Jillybean noted right away that the metal squares were too big. For some reason, this seemed to please her. She grinned in anticipation as she donned the leather apron and stuck the heavy welder’s mask on her head. To Neil, she looked like a kid playing dress up—right up until she lit the torch. The sound of the flames reminded him somewhat of the sound a fuse makes when it burns towards a bomb.
“I’ll go keep the monsters away,” he said stepping back…to give her room, he thought to himself. “Unless you need my help here?”
“No, I got this,” she answered dropping the heavy visor down in front of her face. Her first order of business was to cut the metal squares to fit. Since it didn’t take much muscle, she was able to do it on her own. Neil watched her from atop the truck. From there he could see any zombies coming and keep an eye on her just in case anything went wrong.
The torch blazed bright enough to light up the clearing. The afternoon was growing dark as heavy clouds rolled in. He was sure that it would begi
n raining soon and he worried how moisture would effect a welder’s torch. “It couldn’t put it out,” he said to himself, but wasn’t certain.
The process of cutting through metal was very slow and she only just beat the rain, scurrying beneath the pontoon as the first drops landed heavily.
Neil thought she’d need his help to attach the two metal pieces to the underside of the boat, but again she managed on her own. Using a shimmed log, she braced the first square of metal flush against the underside of the deck, at an angle, three feet from the propeller. She then picked up a long rod and blasted it with the flames until it began to glow.
Seeing as she hadn’t blown herself up and it was warmer and dryer under the pontoon, Neil crawled beneath it and watched through squinted eyes as she basically used the melting metal of the rod as a glue to hold the square to the boat.
It wasn’t a professional weld by any stretch. There were gaps and odd bubbles here and there, but she went over it twice before going to work on the inner aspect. When she saw him watching, she flipped up her faceplate. Although Neil was beginning to shiver, she had sweat dripping into her eyes.
“You can’t watch this!” she scolded. “You’ll go blind and that’s what means you won’t be able to see no more. Also, the monsters or bad guys could see us, on a cuz of the light. You need to go watch for reals.”
That she was right didn’t help much as he got soaked to the bone. Two zombies came stumbling up not long after he climbed back up onto the truck. It was getting so dark that he didn’t see them until he noticed a shadow cast by Jillybean’s torch moving.
“Oh boy,” he said, sliding off the truck. At first, he grabbed the M4, but then thought better of it. There were only two of the beasts, after all. He hurried for the giant axe that he had used to threaten the Colonel and his men.
The rain made it slick and its over-sized head made it ungainly. It clanked right out of his numb hands on the first swing. It lodged in the neck of a gruesome zombie that was well over six feet. Once, it had been a woman. Now it was missing both breasts and had arms that were longer and stronger than Neil’s.
She reached out with one of these great limbs and snagged Neil’s wrist. “Oh, jeeze!” he wailed and leapt about, only freeing himself by shrugging off his jacket. The closest bit of safety was the truck and he climbed in one door, slid across the bench and was out the other side before she could smash in the window.
The second zombie, another female, charged around one side of the truck while the first went around the other. Neil dropped to the muddy earth and wriggled under the car. He was halfway to the temporary safety of the far side when something grabbed his foot and hauled him back.
It was the larger of the two zombies, still with the axe buried in its neck. The creature dragged him out into the rainy evening and dropped down to feed on Neil, only to be brought up short by the long handle of the axe, the bottom of which was planted like a flag pole in the soft earth.
She flailed her arms and as long as they were, they weren’t longer than the axe handle and Neil was able to crawl again under the truck. When he looked back, he saw dark blood coursing down the handle to puddle in the mud.
Once on the other side of the truck, he found his limbs shaking so badly that he had to use the truck’s frame to get to his feet—and then he was running again. The smaller of the two zombies rushed around the truck with frightening speed.
Neil’s speed fell into the “frightened” category and he outraced her around the truck, where the larger zombie was still hung up on the axe. He sped around her and noted she didn’t even look in his direction. With her insane desire to eat him, she had managed to nearly decapitate herself.
Thinking he would use the axe better if he got a second chance, he gave the zombie a kick which sent her flopping lifelessly onto her side. He was then past her and heading to do another lap of the truck. He felt like he was starring in some absurd black and white comedy from the twenties and would have been embarrassed to know what he looked like.
But as no one was around, it didn’t matter that he was so out of breath that he nearly fumbled his next strike with the axe. The metal was wet, cold and slippery and he thunked the smaller zombie on the head with the side of the axe.
It was enough to trip her and he took a better grip of the axe as he gave her another whack.
“Ha!” he cried, in triumph. He gazed around as the grey rain fell. The clearing was empty of adoring fans. “No one’s ever around for my victories.”
He went to the pontoon and told Jillybean and she only brushed him off saying: “Good for you,” without looking away from the flame.
“Good for both of us, really,” he said. “Without me, we’d be…” A gunshot stopped his lips from moving and he stood completely still waiting for a second. The sound hadn’t been close and yet, the fact that he heard it at all, meant it was way too close for comfort.
“Did you hear that?” he asked Jillybean.
She nodded, her mask slipping down her face as she did. “We should get going soon,” she said after re-adjusting the faceplate.
“Just waiting on you.”
A confused look crossed her face. “Really? You’ve pulled the battery from the truck, drained the last of the gas and transferred all of our stuff to the boat?”
“I was just finishing up,” Neil lied. He left to “finish up,” grousing because of the wet and the cold. There wasn’t a second shot, but the first was enough to make them both nervous and they completed their tasks almost at the same time.
Then they were off, heading back down the tributary. Jillybean’s metal V, welded just in front of the propellers, worked perfectly to keep the zombies from getting caught up in them. It wasn’t perfect in other regards, however.
The V created a zone of turbulence in front of the propellers that caused the water to froth as if they were being run in a bathtub and for some reason, the sound of the engine seemed magnified—alarmingly so. Worst of all was the steering.
Pontoons don’t change direction by use of a rudder, instead the entire engine pivots. The V didn’t stop the pivot, however it did change the water flow around the blades and the boat, never nimble to begin with, now handled like a blimp in a thunderstorm.
At high speeds, the steering grew mushy and tended to slide left or right across the water, while at the same time careening forward. As he drove, Jillybean leaned far over the back of the boat to see the action of the propellers and saw a solution.
“Pull over, Neil. I’ll use the torch to cut holes in the metal planks. It’ll create a more natural flow of water.”
Neil was still too nervous over the gunshot to allow it. “We’ll be fine for now. The river is really wide and I’m sure I’ll get the hang of steering.”
He never really did and yet the river was a mile wide in spots and they didn’t hit anything besides zombies and floating logs which, thanks to Jillybean’s V, were kept from ruining the engine.
It was a bumpy, wet and ferociously cold ride. Jillybean’s fix worked well enough for Neil to open up the throttle and they raced down river into a rain that was half sleet. They were both soon soaked to the bone and the cold went right to the marrow. They persevered as long as they could and the miles slipped under them.
The fear of what could be happening to Sadie and Grey carried them beyond the point of sanity and deep into the territory of hypothermia. The cold was so intense that by midnight, Neil couldn’t take it anymore and looked for another tributary to creep up for them to hide in. Jillybean had long before ceased to even talk. She had wrapped herself in so many now drenched blankets she didn’t even notice when he ran up on a sandy bank. She simply fell on her side, much like the giant zombie Neil had fought earlier that night.
“Jillybean?” he asked. She didn’t answer. “Hey! Jillybean!” She didn’t budge when he shook her.
Feeling a crazy desperation, he carried her up the bank and across a long field to the nearest house and, after stripping her dow
n to her dreadfully frail and icy flesh, he bundled her in dry blankets and then built a fire. Leaving the boat where anyone could see was terribly foolish, but he feared for the little girl: she was lethargic and her limbs were stiff. Her zebra had fallen from her hand and sat like a black and white sponge, staring at the ceiling of the little home.
Somewhere in a dark spot of his mind he had a half-forgotten memory about not rubbing the limbs of a person with frostbite, but he took the chance anyway and soon her eyes were able to focus enough for her to ask in a drunken voice: “Are we there yet, daddy?”
“Not yet,” he answered, “but you can rest for now. Go to sleep, hon.” In seconds, Neil found himself crying over her as he realized that if he kept this up, he was going to get the little girl killed.
That he was going to get himself killed as well only brought a shrug.
Chapter 36
Sadie Walcott
As Jillybean slowly recovered from hypothermia, sleeping beneath three dry blankets, cozied up to a fire, Sergeant Hendricks was whipped to death in front of a crowd of three thousand people. They came out despite the cold rain to see if he could last longer than the hundred and two lashes Private Raoul had endured the night before.
He didn’t come close. The crowd left, disappointed after only sixty-one lashes. Depression and the miserable cold hastened his death and in only ten minutes he was a headless pile of bloody meat at the feet of Skinner, who walked over him as he left with the River King, the big axe hefted easily on one shoulder.
Once the bleachers were empty, the four survivors were marched back to the same prison Sadie and Neil had rescued Grey from months before. Not much had changed, except the number of guards which had been doubled. Having been threatened by the River King, personally, the guards watched over their prisoners with hawk eyes.
There would be no escape this time and no chance for revenge, at least not for Grey and his men. They would be killed one by one to the roar of the crowd. That thought was acid to Sadie’s heart. She tried to keep it at arm’s length. She tried to pretend it wasn’t real and yet three times now she had been forced to stand at attention at the end of the gradually shrinking line as her friends died.
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