“What do you think, Jillybean?” Ram asked.
He seemed very, very tall when she looked up at him, like he had stretched somehow. As she stared, she found that her anger left her completely, leaving only a growing fear in its place. She reached out with a shaking hand to grab his steady one and said, “I don’t know. Ok, I guess.”
“I know what you mean,” he whispered. “It looks alright and the people seem ok, but I don’t like it.” Regardless he began walking down the steps. Behind them the others followed: Neil and Sarah holding Eve, behind them Mark and Shondra.
“The Lord welcomes you to his home,” the man with the silver hair announced. “Give thanks and praise.”
The people in white cried out: “Amen!” as though they had but a single voice like a giant. All the people, save one. A girl with black hair sat somewhat apart from the rest; she jerked in her seat at the roar of the crowd. She wouldn’t take her eyes off Jillybean.
“Are you her?” the girl asked when Jillybean had run out of steps to descend.
“I guess so,” Jillybean answered after taking a deep breath. “Is it scary?”
Sadie did an odd thing then. She laughed high and loud even though there were tears in her eyes. “No, it’s not scary. At least not for you, cuz you get to go home. I think I’ll stay…but thanks for coming. Neil, thanks so much for trying, and Sarah…I love you. Ram, you too. And, can I see the baby one more time?”
This she asked of the man with the silver hair. He nodded easily, not the least unhappy with the choice. Sadie kissed Eve who ogled everything around her with big eyes and tried to grab Sadie’s nose with a pudgy fist.
Sarah whispered, “Sadie, no. We have a substitute. Come home with us.”
Sadie hugged her tight and said, “I won’t do this to a little girl.”
No one knew what to say to this, especially Jillybean. What was happening? Was she going to be able to stay with Ram after all? And did he really want her to? She didn’t think so, but at the same time had such a grip on her hand as if he would never let go.
“I take it, Neil, you won’t all be staying and joining the family of believers?” the man with the silver hair asked with disappointment in his words. Neil shook his head and the man smiled sadly. “New Eden is always open to Believers, Neil. This is a safe place for Believers, but only for Believers. Do not return unless you’re ready to join, for I now name you denier.”
Neil blanched. “But you said…”
“I said nothing!” the man thundered in a voice that shook the very water in the pool. “I am but a vessel. The Lord our God speaks through me and his word is law. He has twice now shown you his love by allowing you into our midst. You have seen, but you do not embrace his glorious gift! What is that if not denial? The same is true for these with you. Look upon the grace of our Lord and see his bounty, his love, his wisdom. It is through him that we are safe!”
“Amen,” the people shouted.
“It is through him that we are fed!”
“Amen,” the people shouted.
“It is only through him that we know the beauty of love!”
“Amen,” the people shouted.
“Come and join our family,” the man commanded with arms raised. “Or forever be hunted as a denier. And know this, the Lord our God will not be deceived. He is all knowing and all seeing! You may hide, but according to his desire you will die at the hands of the blessed. What have you to say?”
Though he addressed all of them, only Ipes answered: I say you’re as nutty as squirrel poo. Jillybean almost choked. She cowered into Ram’s leg and hid herself, just in case “The Lord our God” heard the zebra’s blasphemy.
The room was quiet for an agonizing minute, during which the crowd seemed to lean in toward the group. Some even moved into the aisle to block their one line of retreat.
“They have eyes, but they do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear. Nor is there any breath at all in their mouths!” the man intoned, low at first but with growing strength in his voice.
“Amen,” the people said—this time without the excited fervor. The word seemed more like a curse.
“Sad,” Abraham said. He shook his head to clear the gloom and brought out a fresh smile. Just like that, the mood lifted in the room. “Stand clear of the dead, Sadie, for you are most fortunate. Your friends will die in their allotted time, but you will live forever in the kingdom of God.” He came to stand behind her and to Jillybean it looked as though he would pull her throat back and slit it open with a knife. Perhaps it was the low angle that created the illusion because clearly not everyone saw it.
“Wait!” cried Shondra. “I want to take her place.” She pushed past Neil and nearly bowled Jillybean over in her haste to get to the altar. “Will you take me instead? Please, I don’t want to be hunted. I don't want to go back out there with the zombies. I want to be a Believer.”
“That is up to Sadie,” the man said. Gone was the thundering voice, now he was pure sugar. “Will you become a denier and one of the hunted, Sadie? Or will you stay here with your true family?”
Sadie looked about to faint; she swayed like a willow in a stiff breeze. “I…I want to go with them, if that’s ok?”
It clearly wasn’t. To Jillybean it seemed as though the man with the silver hair was like a toddler fuming into a volcanic tantrum. “Go then. Live your last days as a denier,” he said icily. “Today, we will weep for you; tomorrow you will be as the dead.”
“Yes, thank you,” Neil said lamely. He backed away and shooed the others on. Ram and Mark took positions on either side of Sadie who walked with a limp. They propelled her up the stairs, lagging in the rear while Sarah led the way at a speed that bordered on a rude dash.
At the top the men who had brought them in did not stop them, nor did they direct them. They only glared. “Thanks, have a good night,” Sarah said, wearing a painfully false smile. The glares intensified.
In the corridor they were on their own. “Do they want us to get lost?” Sarah asked.
It was a rhetorical question, however Jillybean didn’t understand the concept. She’d been taught that when an adult asked a question you answered, even if the answer was I don’t know.
“I don’t know,” she replied, doing her duty. “But you are going the wrong way.” Sarah had breezed right past an intersection without slowing. On the way in, they had hung a left here. Jillybean pointed to the right. “We have to go this way.”
“No, it’s the next intersection,” Sarah said. She began to march away and Jillybean reached out and took her hand, pulling her back.
“It’s this way, Miss Sarah.”
Sarah looked back and forth in confusion for a few seconds before she turned to the slower half of their group. “Sadie, how do we get out of here?”
“I don’t know,” the teen said through gritted teeth. “This place is a freaking maze and out is the one direction I wasn’t allowed to go in.”
Jillybean pulled harder on Sarah’s hand. “It’s this way,” she insisted. “Even Ipes agrees.”
What are you talking about? the zebra demanded. I was the one who told you.
“I would listen to her,” Ram said.
Ram’s influence helped; they went to the right. At the next intersection Sarah wanted to stop again. “I’m completely turned around,” she said looking at the four corridors. “They all look the same. I have no idea which way we came in.”
Jilly pointed straight forward. “Keep going.”
A pained expression swept Sarah’s features. “How do you know? If we get lost…and they catch us...I don’t want even think about what they’ll do. That’s why I’m a little nervous about taking directions from a…you know, a kid. Do you have a photographic memory or something?”
“I have a memory of taking pictures,” Jillybean said helpfully. “My daddy had a digital camera that he liked very much so. He let me use it all the time; said he liked it because now he could take all the pictures he wanted. I g
uess before he couldn’t. There must have been a law maybe.”
Sarah listened to this and then stood blinking for a second before asking, “Which way?”
Jillybean guided them the rest of the way and within ten minutes they were outside and climbing into the vehicles. They took both and not a one of them cared in the least that the truck had been Shondra's. She was a Believer now, in their minds she was as dead and dangerous as a zombie.
Then they were driving hell bent for the highway, where they paused to discuss where they should go.
The conversation went like this: “Where should we go?” Ram asked. Each of them shrugged, one after the other, including Jillybean. She didn’t know where they should go and frankly didn’t care, just as long as Ram went too, and just as long as he continued to hold her hand. He hadn’t stopped from the moment they had climbed into the Ford F-250.
Chapter 31
Ram
North Bound
The little group did not flee far in that early morning. Each of them felt complete exhaustion on a physical and emotionally level. With the sun cracking the horizon Neil led them to one of the homes they had explored the day before. It came complete with a pond in the back and its own squad of undead that stood about like sentries in front.
These were killed in a semi-silent mode using bats and golf clubs, and in Neil’s case an axe. The sounds of splitting heads, a percussionist’s nightmare, left even Ram a little queasy. It was a state he discarded minutes later for a deep sleep.
It was late afternoon before the lightest step woke him. It was Jillybean. Without a single word of discussion she had slept with him, cuddled up for the entire day and now there was a little, warm depression in the blankets and she was creeping away.
He made a noise like a warthog's grunt and she turned.
“Gotta go baffroom,” she whispered swaying a little. He couldn’t help but smile at her sleepy state. Her fly away hair had combined itself with bed-head to leave the impression she had slept in the dryer, while her eyes, one cracked open, the other closed, seemed confused as to whether she was awake or still asleep.
Ram opened his mouth to give directions to the bathroom, but closed it again when he realized he had no idea. They were in a bedroom and they had definitely passed through a front door on the way in, but beyond that he didn’t know the first thing about the house.
“We’ll find it together,” he said, standing and taking her hand. It turned out to be the room next door. That it had been used already was evidenced by the biting odor of urine; neither Ram nor Jillybean paid the least attention. Instead, as habit, each stood guard as the other went.
“I have a can of tuna left for breakfast,” she said. He had lost his backpack on the bridge two days before, but she had clung to her Beleiber backpack with tenacity. “We can share. I won’t eat much.”
He knew she wouldn’t. “Let’s see what Neil has,” he suggested. They crept down the stairs, Ram’s memory of the place coming awake with each step. They found the kitchen right where he expected and found Neil awake and bustling about—again as expected.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” he whispered. “The sun’s only going to be up for a few more hours and I have a treat planned! After the last few days I think we deserve it. Ram, I need a bunch of firewood cut, but be careful the woods are chock full of stiffs. And you, Jillybean, can you fish?”
Her head went side-to-side but her mouth said, “Yeah. Ipes knows how. But I can learn real fast, too, which is real good because Ipes doesn’t like touching bugs or fish, and he doesn’t like the water, not really. He says he’s more of a Show-pony, whatever that means.”
Neil chuckled and took the little girl by the shoulder, leading her to the back yard. There he showed her the pole he had already set up and the bucket of dirt and worms he had ready. As Ram watched Neil sat on a log at the water’s edge and went over the basics of fishing and what to do when she caught a fish.
Excitedly, she made a few casts with the rod. When she successively sent the bobber further than ten feet, Neil declared her ready for a worm.
Ram watched and the strange feeling of jealousy that would later grow to amaze him was then only a hiccup. He went into the forest, keeping just within the tree-line so he could keep an eye on the girl, though why he felt the need he didn’t know. She fished only partially attuned to the water and the pole; the rest of her keen perception she sent outward. The shadow of a chipmunk couldn’t creep past without her knowing.
It wasn’t long before she caught her first fish. It was so big that it unbalanced her as she leapt up. She took two wobbly steps into the pond before she yanked back on the pole and began to work the reel.
“I know how to do it,” she said. “Jeeze, Ipes. You’re not the expert on everything.”
Ram smiled and began heading her way, however she landed the fish before he had taken a dozen steps. With a great deal of splash and flap, mostly on the part of the fish, Jillybean stuck it, still hooked through the mouth, in a bucket. She took both to Neil.
“What a fish!” he exclaimed. “Who knew a pond that small could hold a whale?”
Jillybean looked closer at the fish and said, “That’s not a whale. It doesn’t have a hole in the top of its head. The hole is where it shoots water at you.”
“Really?” Neil asked as he worked the hook free.
“Yep. This is only a normal fish. Though it is pretty. Maybe we should put it back. I don’t want to eat a real pretty fish…or we can keep it! We can get an acqairdim…acquararium…”
“Aquarium,” Neil prompted.
“An aquarium,” she replied, sounding out the word slowly to get it right. “We can get one of them and take him with us.”
“Fish don’t travel well. They get sick easily,” Neil told her. “Here’s a deal for you. If you catch five more fish, I’ll let you free this one.”
Eagerly she nodded. This time, Neil had her bait her own hook so that she would learn. In a minute she was back on her log, peering over her knees with her little feet turned inward so that her toes touched.
Ram went back to cutting wood and as he did he wondered what sort of dad he would make. Besides having been a child himself, he had little experience with children. They were a mystery that he had avoided like the plague. In his mind he had been right to give up Eve. There was no question that he lacked the patience to raise a baby, while the hormone-driven battles that swirled around Sadie convinced him that a teenager would be just as bad.
Frequently he marveled at Neil. Practically overnight he had gone from confirmed bachelor to husband and father of two. Yet he had not just taken it in stride, he had flourished. It wasn’t something Ram felt he could replicate.
Then why was he so drawn to Jillybean? Why did he feel the need to protect her and teach her and love her as a father would? Was it her age? Was she at the “good” age that most people referred to.
She’s six? Enjoy it while it lasts because pretty soon she’ll be a monster who hates you. How many times had he heard comments just like that?
Was it that Jillybean just happened to be between the “terrible twos” and the “torturous teens” that he found her so charming to be near? If so what would happen in a few years time? Endless arguments? Fights and then fits of silence followed by her running away or hooking up with some loser that would have Ram mulling over the idea of murder?
“I can’t keep her, can I?” he asked himself while watching Jillybean carry on a conversation with her zebra. Clearly its smart-aleck nature had come out because in seconds he was sitting with his nose to the rough bark of a pine tree.
Ram stood there watching the little girl catch fish after fish and all the while his heart was like a great weight. He couldn’t ever remember feeling the organ in his chest with such force as when he watched Jillybean. He loved her, pure and simple, but would that make him a good father? He was good at fighting for her and making sure that she was fed and warm, but he wasn’t like Neil. He wasn’t
good at the little things; the day-to-day stuff.
“And besides I have a hero complex,” he said, catching sight of a zombie advancing on the little girl. Judging by the fact that she sat frozen in place beside the log, she had seen the zombie even before he had. Her eyes sparked with shrewd intelligence. He could see her calculating the odds of having been seen—about sixty-forty in his mind—and what to do if she had been.
Her coltish legs were coiled beneath her body, ready to spring her in any direction. Whether they would need to spring they didn't find out. Before Ram could take even a step, Neil came flying from the kitchen, brandishing the golf club Ram had picked up outside of Savannah the day before.
"Don't watch," Neil ordered Jillybean. She watched regardless, perhaps fearing Neil's attack with a weapon he wasn't familiar with would fail...which it did.
He struck as fearsome a blow as he could manage, and it was indeed powerful, but misaimed. Instead of striking with the weighty head of the club which was deadly, he hit with the hollow shaft and bent it crooked over the top of the zombie’s skull.
What would have given pause to the toughest human barely slowed the zombie.
"Run!" cried Neil, turning to flee. Jillybean didn't budge.
"There's a good rock, Mister Neil." She pointed at a hardy chunk of slate.
Neil ran to it, heaved it out of the ground, and then hucked it at the onrushing zombie with a victorious grunt. The zombie caught it full in the face—a non-fatal blow. It was a stunning shot and both the rock and the zombie rebounded away.
With another grunt, Neil hefted the rock a second time. His follow-up attack was an overhand blow that caved in the top of his enemy's skull. It dropped to its knees and for half a minute it spurted black fluid like an oil well.
"Eew," Jillybean said, making a face.
Neil wore the same face, except his was also tinged with green. "Yeah, eew."
The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors Page 28