“Can you shoot them from here?”
He sat back. “What do you mean? Like using the camera as my aimer?” She nodded and he nodded back. It was worth a shot.
She had pulled back the camera for a moment and whispered: “One, two, three, go,” and placed it back at the edge. He saw the men clearer now: they stood out as grey figures against a darker background. They were crouched side by side, aiming their guns and when they fired, the screen bloomed white.
“Move,” he hissed and as she pulled the camera back, he stuck the gun in the portal and fired four times, using the ladder as his azimuth. His blind aim was spot on. There was grunt and cry. Someone fired from within, but none of the bullets came close to the portal. Neil tracked them across the roof.
These were the shots of a dying man. Jillybean stuck the camera into the opening again and the feed confirmed two more men were down on the deck. She spun the camera in both directions—there were two others bracketing the ladder but further back, neither would get too close.
She thought for a second and then completely flummoxed Neil by loading her M79 and firing it at the forest, forty feet to their right. The explosion was sharp and made Neil flinch. It also made the two men shy back.
“Not good enough,” she said. Taking the grenade she had fired into the first trader, she whispered: “Yell, ‘fire in the hole’ and then I’ll throw this down. It won’t explode, so only hesitate a second before going down there. And take these with you.” In her hand was a radio and the camera.
He took them, but all he really cared about was the grenade. “Are you sure it won’t explode?”
“No,” was all she said.
“Ah, Jeeze. Well, okay, here goes nothing. Fire in the hole!” She chucked the grenade down. There were what sounded like a hundred girlish screams and Neil waited only long enough to cringe his misshapen face before following the grenade down, going so fast that he was afraid he would lose his grip, which he did, however, the dead man with the huge dent in his head broke his fall.
It was dark and close in the truck. The main hall went twenty-five feet in both directions, with wooden stalls lining it. Most had curtains that were drawn, behind which female slaves hid. One curtain, ten feet away moved. A man with a gun peeked a frightened face out; he didn’t see Neil sitting on the dead man’s chest with his pistol aimed.
At ten feet, Neil was as deadly as anyone. He pulled the trigger, there was a flash and a bang and the man toppled, blood shooting out of his head. Fearing he would be shot from behind, Neil spun, but the second man was nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t have anything you want!” the man screamed. “If you want the girls, just take ‘em. I won’t stop you.”
“Where’s the new girl?” Neil shouted back.
“Downstairs. Nobody has touched her, I promise. I won’t stop you just don’t come down here or I will shoot. Okay? Do we have a deal?”
Neil was about to answer when a hand touched his shoulder. He screamed and nearly shot Jillybean, but stopped himself just in time. She had zipped down the ladder in the two seconds he’d had his back turned. “I’ll stand guard here,” she said, peering down the hall. In one hand she had her .38 and in the other the iPad. Across her back were her pack and the M79. “We can figure out what to do with him when we’re all safe and sound.”
“Got it,” Neil said. He plugged in his ear piece and put the radio in his pocket. He then grabbed extra magazines from the body he’d been sitting on. “We’re almost through this,” he whispered to himself. Almost meant who knew how many more enemies on the lower level?
“Go,” she whispered back to him. “Keep the camera pointed and I’ll be able to help you.”
What the men on the bottom level of the truck were thinking was anyone’s guess. They had to know they had been boarded, but there was no way they’d be able to guess that it was by only three people.
They were all huddled near the ladder at the back of the truck with their weapons aimed at it. Neil inched the camera down and panned it around.
“No good,” Jillybean said into his ear. “Come back.” He eased back, keeping his weapon trained down the hall. She held up a ball of tin foil that had a twisted bit of napkin sticking out of it. “Use this. You have a lighter, right?” After patting his pockets and shaking his head, she rolled her eyes, held out one of her own and said: “Please don’t lose it, it’s my last one.”
“I can’t promise anything.” It was only half a joke. He hurried back to ladder and lit the foul-smelling smoke bomb. He waited long enough for it to ignite before squawking: “Ayah!” and throwing it down the ladder.
Bullets fired from below, chased him back from the edge of the ladder. It took fifteen seconds for the smoke to cloud the back half of the truck. Holding his breath, he stuck the camera down and waited for Jillybean.
“There are four of them and they’ve moved back. The closer two are crouched in the hall.”
“Do you think they’ll be able to see me?”
She didn’t hesitate: “No, get down there, quick. I thought I heard one of them getting weird about the smoke. They could do anything.”
Neil took a deep breath and went down the ladder, holding onto the rungs this time. Now, he was down to it. He was in the lion’s den. “Tell me when I’m aimed proper,” he said, holding out both the gun and the camera at the same time.
“Now,” she hissed. He fired twice and she practically yelled: “Hit!” With the sudden avalanche of gun fire from down the hall, he could barely hear her. He threw himself into one of the slave stalls, where a woman screamed and backed into the corner with her hands up.
“Hush,” he said and stuck the camera out into the hall.
There was a pause and then Jillybean said: “Fire!”
“Sorry, I didn’t have the gun out. How about now?”
She was quiet for a moment and then she said: “A little to the right. More…more…fire!” Two more shots and she hissed: “You got him. Oh, no…oh boy. Uh, Neil, start talking and don’t stop.”
“Start talking? What do you mean start talking? Is something wrong? Are you in trouble or am…” Three shots came from the second floor. They were heavy sounds, nothing like the thin crackle her .38 made.
“Jillybean? Jillybean?” he whispered.
The radio went fuzzy for a moment and then a man’s voice came on. “Fuck you, dipshit. Your little friend is dead and you’re never getting out of there alive. Even if I have to burn this bitch down.”
Chapter 46
Jillybean
She heard him coming, or rather she heard the girls around him making scared noises as he checked each stall searching for the little girl. Jillybean had been too loud and the guard they had thought was out of the fight had heard her piping voice rise in excitement as she saw Neil actually winning the fight, something she had secretly doubted he would be able to accomplish.
The man was coming for Jillybean, but he was a chicken and he moved slowly. She could picture him squinting through the smoke, hiding behind his gun, trying to sneak up on a little girl.
Quick as a wink, Jillybean pulled off her back pack and her coat, pulled a thin filament of wire from the pack and went up the ladder to hang both the coat and the pack from the low ceiling. With the dark and the smoke, it looked somewhat like a person and she hoped that would be good enough.
She then left the radio on the floor with Neil hissing silly questions just as she knew he would. When the man jumped around the corner firing, he was partially blinded by the smoke and his own preconceived notions.
The bullets ripped down the pack and the jacket and he had enough humanity left in him not to touch what could have been a body lying next to the radio.
“Fuck you, dipshit,” he whispered into the radio, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. The brew that Jillybean had concocted was foul in the nostrils and worse on the eyes. “Your little friend is dead and you’re never getting out of there alive. Even if I have to burn this
bitch down”
The smoke must have given him an idea. It was the last one he would ever have.
Like a monkey, Jillybean had flown up the ladder, thinking that the man would want to go up for fresh air. When she heard his nasty words, she had leaned down through the portal, arm extended, the .38 already cocked.
She put a bullet in his head, right in the top, making a hole very much like a whale’s blow hole. It began to spout blood. Three spurts and the man toppled over.
In a flash, she went down into the smoke to fetch the radio. “Cat, this is mouse. Stop pointing the camera at the floor!”
“Jilly…you…ay? …heard…shots.” His voice cut in and out as the sharp crack of gunshots overrode all other sounds.
“I’m fine! Now listen, there’s a man crawling towards you. He’s twenty feet away on the other side of the hall. Are you aiming?” She couldn’t see the front few inches of the barrel of his gun as she had the other times they had worked in conjunction.
“No, there…shooting…on. I’m pinned…can’t get…”
It was a moment before she could decipher the fragmented sentence: he was pinned down by cover fire and couldn’t expose himself enough to get off a shot.
The easy solution was to change positions. It sounded simple enough up on the roof of the mega-truck where the smoke was being blown behind them in a dense cloud and no one was shooting at her. Down in the murky depths of the truck where Neil probably couldn’t see more than two feet in front of his face, it had to be a frightful thing to consider.
And Neil wasn’t the bravest of men—except when he had to be, and then he was a lion. She could hear his raspy breathing ramp up and then the view from the camera bounced around so much that she didn’t know what she was seeing.
A second later, the view steadied and she saw the grey figures as Neil moved the camera from right to left: there was a small person huddled in a stall, then a quarter of a man visible at the end of the hall, his gun flaring white with every shot, and then there was the man on the floor, creeping forward.
He was ten feet closer, now. “Angle down,” she said into the radio. “Stop! Fire for effect!” The screen flared white four times before the view jumped as Neil ducked back. Slowly, he brought the camera around the corner. The man on the floor was contorted in an odd position, but wasn’t moving.
“Dead,” she said, curtly. “Now the other one…oh my God!” Movement out of the corner of her eye caused her to glance up from the screen. The fifth truck had finally caught up. It pulled up out of the smoke, looking bigger than a house. It cab had its armor up and there were two men in the turret, one manning the .50 caliber machine gun, the other holding a shoulder-mounted rocket.
Jillybean leapt down into the smoke, just as Captain Grey swerved the truck to the right, trying to cut off his pursuers. She barely hung on and the iPad went flying and she could hear the glass crack plain as day.
“Oh no,” she whispered, hurrying for it. Not only was the screen broken, the picture cut in and out. “It can still work if Neil…” The screen went completely blank.
A second later there was the Bam! Bam! Bam! of a .50 caliber. She dropped like a rock, expecting more shots but when no more came she suspected that the first three had been a warning.
“Cat! The other truck is here and the video feed is down. I’ll be right there.”
“What? No, don’t come down here, it’s too dangerous. I got this. Jillybean? Jillybean? Over?”
There was no time for arguing and Jillybean let him squawk as she ran for the rear ladder. She was down it and next to his elbow by the time he said: “Over?”
“Don’t freak out,” she said. He was crouched down and just the right height for her to speak into his ear, and yes, he freaked out. He almost leapt straight out of his skin; she only calmly stepped back.
“What are you doing here?” He was practically yelling. “I told you…”
She cut him off by slapping a hand over his mouth. The cold fury was back and for once Ipes wasn’t butting in. “Cover me,” she whispered. He started to resist and the whisper turned to a shocking growl: “Just do it.”
Without waiting for a reply, she scurried low to the other side of the hall and then began to creep forward, making herself the tiniest of targets. Neil pulled himself together after a few seconds and started firing his weapon.
In no time, he ran out of ammo, and Jillybean paused as her last enemy left alive on the truck fired back. A frightful grin stretched across her face as the gun flared in orange blasts and the bullets slashed the smoke inches over her head. He was shooting wildly giving up his position and his range. If she wanted to, she could have tried to take the shot right there, but with Sadie somewhere close by, Jillybean wouldn’t take the chance.
Neil began firing again and he must have been thinking the same thing. His shots were ridiculously high, one even hit the ceiling. As he shot, Jillybean crept closer, so close that when Neil paused and the trader leaned out to return fire, she was so close she could have reached out to touch him.
She did touch him with the barrel of the gun as she pulled the trigger. The bullet should have gone in one ear and out the other, but at that exact moment, the truck lurched hard and she didn’t know where the bullet went, she only knew that the man was not dead.
His eyes were strangely wide as he turned toward Jillybean with his pistol sweeping in an arc just above her head. “I can’t see,” he said in a shocked voice. It was dim and with the smoke everything was as hazy as could be, but he should have been able to see the little girl kneeling next to the edge of the next stall.
Jillybean raised her pistol and she knew that he was indeed blind when he didn’t flinch as it came within a few inches of his face. There was no hesitancy in her as she pulled the trigger. Blind or not, the trader still held a gun, meaning he was still dangerous and he had yet to be held accountable for his crimes.
She found him guilty and the bullet settled accounts. She wished she could have been done with the killing, but the truck was swerving hard left and right and she could picture Grey frantically trying to keep the other truck directly behind them.
If they got around, they’d find Grey easy pickings since the armor designed to protect the driver was still down and couldn’t be hauled up while he was busy driving. Jillybean would have to find a way to stop the other truck and quick.
“Neil!” she cried in her high, piping voice. “He’s dead. Get the smoke bomb off the truck, quick. I gotta see what there is to see.” This last she said quietly. Unless there were other weapons on board, they didn’t stand a chance against the other truck. Both had nearly useless .50 caliber machine guns, but the other one had a rocket. If fired precisely, it could take out the front of the truck and leave the slaves still alive.
She was deep in thought when someone to her right asked: “Jillybean? Is that you?”
Startled, Jillybean glanced over and through the smoke she saw what looked like something out of a dream. Sadie sat against the side of the truck blinking back tears. She was so pale she looked dead and Jillybean was afraid that she was either seeing a ghost or her crazy mind was inventing the girl out of whole-cloth.
“Sadie? Are you real?” She wanted to go to her big sister, but she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to touch her, that her hand would pass right through.
Sadie grinned at the question. “Of course I am. You’re the one who might not be real. How did you get here and how did you find me? And was that Neil who couldn’t shoot straight?”
Jillybean couldn’t answer. She was too overcome hearing her sister’s voice and before she knew it, she broke down sobbing. Sadie stretched out as far as the chain around her neck would allow and pulled the little girl in close.
This was no ghost, no figment. She was as warm and wonderful as ever. “It’s okay, it’s going to be okay,” Sadie said.
The goth-girl smelled of cheap perfume and cheap soap. She had been scrubbed clean and then doused with a sachet
that reminded Jillybean of the old lady she had met in Oklahoma. It was a scent that only an uncultured, brute of a man would choose and it brought her back to her senses.
“It’s not going to be okay,” she said, pulling back. “Who has the keys to your lock?”
“A guy named Rick.” Sadie pointed to the top of her own head and swirled her finger. “He’s mostly bald except he’s got hair around the fringes. He was…”
Jillybean held up a silencing hand as she pulled out her radio. “Cat, the keys to Sadie’s lock is with the bald guy. You know the one I first shot with my grenade launcher.”
“You have a grenade launcher?” Sadie asked, with a twinkle in her eyes. “Cool.”
“It is kinda, I guess, but I wish it was a rocket launcher. There’s still one more of them trucks out there and I don’t have any of the good grenades left. I only have the anti-personnel ones and they aren’t good against armor. Do you know if they have any good weapons on board this thing?”
There was a cross-breeze going through the truck and already, the heavy smoke was beginning to clear. A painted woman in a short skirt and heels spoke from across the hall: “No. This is the slave truck. They only have a few guns. Nothing that can hurt one of them trucks. If you were smart, New Girl you would sit right back down and hope you don’t get shot. Your friends don’t stand a chance.”
The rage in Jillybean flared—once more it was ice-cold and deadly. Her little pistol came up and she advanced on the woman. “I have blowed up three of these trucks. I have only one left and I’m very, really tired of it all. If you were smart, you would tell me where they keep the weapons.”
“Is she serious?” the woman asked, her eyes darting from the pistol to Sadie.
A grim laugh came from the teen. “This is her being calm. You saw what she did to Julio. If I was you, I’d tell her what she wants to know and I’d do it with a smile.” Sadie had a wicked gleam in her eye and when she spoke she showed her teeth like a wolf might. She was angry. Jillybean could feel it coming off of her in waves.
The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8 Page 47