The Undead World (Book 9): The Apocalypse Revenge Read online

  The Apocalypse Revenge

  The Undead World Novel 9

  A Zombie Tale by Peter Meredith

  Copyright 2016

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Fictional works by Peter Meredith:

  A Perfect America

  The Sacrificial Daughter

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day One

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day Two

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Three

  The Horror of the Shade: Trilogy of the Void 1

  An Illusion of Hell: Trilogy of the Void 2

  Hell Blade: Trilogy of the Void 3

  The Punished

  Sprite

  The Blood Lure The Hidden Land Novel 1

  The King’s Trap The Hidden Land Novel 2

  To Ensnare a Queen The Hidden Land Novel 3

  The Apocalypse: The Undead World Novel 1

  The Apocalypse Survivors: The Undead World Novel 2

  The Apocalypse Outcasts: The Undead World Novel 3

  The Apocalypse Fugitives: The Undead World Novel 4

  The Apocalypse Renegades: The Undead World Novel 5

  The Apocalypse Exile: The Undead World Novel 6

  The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7

  The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8

  The Apocalypse Revenge: The Undead World Novel 9

  The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead Book One

  The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead Book Two

  Pen(Novella)

  A Sliver of Perfection (Novella)

  The Haunting At Red Feathers(Short Story)

  The Haunting On Colonel's Row(Short Story)

  The Drawer(Short Story)

  The Eyes in the Storm(Short Story)

  The Witch: Jillybean in the Undead World

  Chapter 1

  Jillybean

  Ipes the zebra, Jillybean’s best friend in all the world, was buried in a cake box next to the Neosho River in Northern Oklahoma. Jillybean went out alone the day before Christmas, taking her usual assortment of weapons, a Hello Kitty backpack filled with a wide range of what she considered necessary items, and a modified Jeep Rubicon.

  The Jeep resembled a small tank and had been through so many changes that it was nearly as dangerous as one.

  Using her new self-taught welding skills she had added layers of sheet metal and Kevlar around the entire structure and a triple layer chain skirt to protect the tires. It was, in essence, utterly bullet proof. Since this reduced visibility to zero, she had installed miniature cameras which led to her having to mount monitors within the vehicle so that the driver’s seat looked like the cockpit of a low-budget spaceship.

  Besides the armor, she had added a number of weapons including a wire-guided, M249 Squad Assault Weapon set on a track, allowing it to swivel left and right. Jillybean had implanted the monitor for the infrared camera-mounted weapon in the steering wheel where the airbag had once sat and with a push of a button she could rattle off two hundred rounds a minute.

  For tougher than average foes, she also added a device that released homemade pipe bombs from beneath the Jeep. Each of the bombs were on a three second fuse and each had approximately the power of two hand grenades.

  In the event that the machine gun and the bombs proved inadequate, she installed a smoke generator that combined potassium chlorate, baking powder and malt. It operated using the heat generated from the exhaust pipe and could produce enough smoke in seconds to hide her, the Jeep and forty elephants if needed.

  And lastly, she welded aluminum struts to the gas and brake pedals so that her feet could reach them without a problem. Needless to say, her driving was much improved especially as she had “wasted” gas practicing driving on the football field of Vinita High.

  Granny Annie had thought it all a sad waste of resources and never failed to natter on when Jillybean would leave to test her inventions. “Please, we don’t have a lot to waste on all of that nonsense. You’re safe here, my dear.”

  Not for a moment did the little girl believe that. The only slight bit of safety in the world lay in the twin sciences of preparation and constant vigilance. Granny Annie was fine with preparation; she had laid aside quite a bit for the coming winter, and Jillybean had augmented that with daily forages out into the wilds of Oklahoma. Already she had thoroughly ransacked the towns of Bushyhead, Adair, Clairmore, and had even gone as far away as Tulsa.

  The winter would not be a problem when it came to supplies. It would be a problem, however, when it came to vigilance and common sense. Granny Annie had been lucky so far. In the year and a half since the start of the apocalypse, no one had bothered her. In fact, almost no one even knew there was a town called Vinita and even fewer knew she lived in the heart of it. This was not due to any precautions taken on her part.

  In broad daylight, she ambled around town with her squeaky cart and rarely saw a living soul and when she did catch someone passing through, she was generally pitied and given very favorable trades. It was only through luck that she had yet to have a run-in with slavers and bandits, not that anyone would try to enslave her; that was preposterous even to Jillybean, but they would take her belongings. That was a given. They would leave her with absolutely nothing and if she gave them lip, they’d kill her without batting an eye.

  Despite Jillybean’s stories about the evil in the world, Granny Annie refused to believe it and acquiesced to some of the little girl’s demands only after she threatened to leave.

  “Please stay, oh please, please,” Granny Annie had begged, her gnarled fingers clutching at Jillybean’s pink sweater—it had not yet been December when this conversation had taken place and Jillybean was still wearing mostly pink. It wasn’t until the second week of the month that she had traded out her favorite color of pink for reds and greens as was only appropriate for the holiday.

  “Okay, but you have to do some things for me,” Jillybean had answered. “Really, it’s for both of us; to keep us safe.” In truth, the little girl had no intention of leaving Granny Annie. For one, she had nowhere else to go. The world had turned against her in as complete a fashion as she could imagine. Although she had always tried to be a good person, it just never turned out like she planned and everywhere she had been she had left bodies and blood and enemies in her wake. Even the people of the Estes Valley, the very people she had saved from the Azael and an army of monsters, had been turned against her.

  The second reason that she didn’t want to leave was that she loved the humpbacked old woman. Yes, she wasn’t exactly pleasant to look upon and she was plodding and set in her ways, but she was also sweet and loving and treated Jillybean like a real person, something she hadn’t experienced since her father had died.

  Jillybean’s precautions were simple enough: no fires in the daytime—the smoke would be a beacon visible from miles away; supplies were to be divided up into two equal parts and hidden around town; the house was to be booby-trapped at night and emergency hiding places prepared.

  She even tried to get Granny Annie to run evacuation drills, but gave up after three tries. No force on earth could get the old woman to move at more than a snail’s pace.

  A tornado could, a voice said, speaking directly into Jillybean’s ear. Quick as lightning, she spun on her heel, her .38 caliber police special suddenly in her hand. It was Christmas Eve and
she was standing by the river where the water flowed calmly by and the air was still. She would have known if someone had snuck up on her, and yet, the voice had been so clear…so real that her hand shook as her eyes darted about.

  “You aren’t real,” she said, slowly spinning in place. Nothing moved in the clearing and little moved beyond it save for a crow gliding off in the distance just above the trees. Jillybean waited, listening, her head tilted as her heart thrummed in her chest. “The voice wasn’t real,” she said when her pulse finally slowed. “None of them are ever real.”

  She slid the gun back in her pocket and glanced down at the cake box where Ipes laid, snuggled in a square of white silk that she had found in a woman’s clothing store in Tulsa. Like a perfectly framed picture, she could see him through the clear plastic and with the gaping hole in his belly hidden by the silk, he looked to be sleeping.

  Who sleeps with their eyes open?

  Jillybean’s hand was in her coat and back on the grip of the .38 so fast that she almost shot a hole through the pocket. A second later, she realized that it was the voice in her head again. She forced her hand off the grip. “It’s not real!” she hissed.

  I’m as real as Ipes was. Hell, I’m more real because I’m an actual person. I’m your fath…

  Before the voice could finish, Jillybean’s hand, flat and hard, swung through the air and smacked her own left cheek. There was a crack like thunder, her head shot back and her eyes crossed for a brief moment.

  Jillybean! What are you do…

  The hand came again, hitting the little girl so hard that she reeled and her knees buckled. She fell to the cold earth, a rock biting into her left palm, while her right felt as though it were on fire. She raised it again, waiting for the voice to dare speak again.

  The voices weren’t real because she wouldn’t let them be. It was a conscious decision on her part not to be crazy and she had vowed not to be crazy even if she had to kill herself. For the most part, her attempt to force sanity had been working. The voices in her head came only when she was stressed or afraid…or sad. And just then her heart was heavy with sadness.

  The cake box with the dead zebra had fallen to the earth and now there was dirt on the side of it. She licked her thumb and cleaned it, forgetting that she had been about to bury it.

  “It should be clean,” she said to herself. “Ipes would have wanted it clean.” In truth Ipes would have been afraid to be put in the dirt forever. Jillybean knew this and it was why the box had been in her room at Granny Annie’s for so long. And, if she hadn’t caught the slightest twinkle in Ipes’ eye the day before, it would still be there.

  Had the twinkle been real? Or had it just been a trick of the light? Or was it a trick of her broken mind? She didn’t know and she wasn’t going to take any chances with her craziness, not even for Ipes. She had decided right then that it was time to bury him before he started talking again.

  With one last look around, Jillybean placed the box on the ground and removed a gardening shovel from her backpack. The dark earth came up easily and although she could have dug very deep, she only cleared enough room to fit the box. “So he won’t be that afraid,” she said, not realizing that she was developing a bad habit of talking to herself—and answering herself.

  When the box was snugged into its hole, Jillybean said a prayer in a hitching voice, cried so many tears her jacket sleeve was a boogery, wet mess, and then covered up the box with indecent haste. For a second there as she had wiped her sleeve across her face to catch all the tears, she had been sure she had seen something move within the cake box.

  Had it been a monster version of Ipes coming back to life, she could have handled it. After all, the monsters were usually slow and Ipes had been slow back when he was alive. He’d be like a turtle, now, or a sloth. And he didn’t really have any teeth or claws or anything that could hurt her, and even if he did, she was well armed with both guns and bombs.

  The real reason she had covered him so fast was the idea that it was actually Ipes moving around in the box. The real Ipes, alive like he used to be, despite the huge hole in him. He would make a funny comment and ask to go home with her and that was an altogether scarier thought than any monster version of Ipes.

  “It would mean I’m still crazy.” And there was nothing worse than that in her world. She stood when the box was covered in a mound and watched the loose dirt to make sure that it remained still.

  After half a minute, she breathed out a sigh of relief and said, “Good. Ipes, I love you, but please rest in peace. That’s what means go to heaven and wait for me there. Okay? Good.” She made it to the Jeep before she remembered something and hurried back. “I almost forgot to say Merry Christmas. That cookie in your box is from me. Granny Annie helped me make them, but I did all the work. Oh, I forgot to tell you: I can cook stuff now. I hope you like it.”

  With a final goodbye and her usual, cautious look around, she climbed into the Jeep. “Let’s go home, Jessica,” she said. No one replied and it would have been very odd if they had. Jessica was the name she had given to the Jeep and everyone knew that Jeeps couldn’t talk.

  She left the Neosho River behind and drove along the back roads until she came to the edge of Vinita where the houses were worn and dusty-looking. All the homes on the edge of town had the same flat-earth weathered look, and it was no wonder since they took the brunt of the wind that howled through the state sometimes day and night.

  The wind had blown itself into Texas the night before and so Jillybean could see the smoke rising in the center of the town just as plain as day—of course it meant that if there was anyone within ten miles they’d also be able to see it.

  “Oh, for all darn it,” she cursed her heaviest curse as she gunned the Jeep down the street, using the front camera to weave in and out of the monsters. As always, Jillybean drove to the street that ran parallel to Granny Annie’s and parked in the garage of a house that was two doors down and one back.

  When she slipped out of the garage on foot, she hunkered down next to a bush that had spent the last year and a half growing out of control and looked like a thousand-armed stick monster. With her ears pricked, she listened for the sound of a car’s engine and when she heard none, she focused on the moans of the monsters to see if they were more excited than usual. They weren’t.

  Still, Jillybean proceeded with caution, easing through the shrubbery and then through a gap in the loose boards in Grannie Annie’s back fence. She paused once to glare at the smoke drifting up from her chimney. It was a black feather rising a hundred feet into the sky before it dissipated into nothing.

  With an irritated air about her, she came at the house from an angle that would minimize exposure until she stood in the shadow of the eaves, listening to Granny Annie sing Christmas carols in her wheezy voice. She was alone and safe. But for how long? Jillybean wondered as she slipped in through the back door leaving tiny wet tracks behind her.

  “What did I say about the fire?” Jillybean asked, her arms folded across her skinny torso. She seemed more like the adult in the room that the wrinkled and weathered granny.

  “But it’s Christmas, silly. Even bad guys celebrate Christmas. And besides, I have a surprise. I know you’ve been very mopey in the last couple of days and so I started the pies early. I’ve got apple and pecan going.”

  It was true that with the coming of the holidays and with Ipes’ funeral, Jillybean hadn’t been herself. She had been dour and sad. Pies would certainly help that. I’ll let it go, just this once, she said to herself.

  “A nut pie?” she asked, coming around to look at the uncooked pie covered in what looked like split nuts. She’d never had pecan pie before. “It sounds crunchy.” Actually, it sounded strange, dry and a little icky.

  “Oh, you will like it,” Granny Annie assured, and she was right. Jillybean had two servings of both and discovered that pecan pie was her favorite pie of all time.

  The next day was Christmas and Jillybean said nothing
as Granny Annie made another daytime fire. Her cooking was really extraordinary and Jillybean couldn’t wait to taste the stewed rabbit. The two of them had a fine division of labor going: Jillybean would hunt the various critters, usually rabbit, squirrel, or pheasant, and Granny Annie would do the cooking and the cleaning.

  That night the little girl fell asleep with her tummy bursting. She dreamed vibrantly and in depth, but not of pies. She saw herself on the Colonel’s Island leading a string of men who were horsing heavy boxes on their shoulders. One of the men was the Colonel himself, looking nervous. He kept licking his lips and darting his eyes around at the dark. A part of her enjoyed his discomfort.

  As dreams always seemed to, the scene shifted erratically. Now they were on the pontoon she had stolen. Neil stood over three bound men holding a tall axe. The men blabbered and blubbered and suddenly she was behind one of them holding her police special. When she pulled the trigger, it was oddly muffled. “Haigh,” she whispered in her sleep.

  Haigh spasmed and fell straight into the river to float among the monsters. In that slow-motion way of dreams, she turned to the other two men on the boat. They tried to run, but the edges of the boat seemed to hold them on board and they only went in circles. She shot them over and over, but they wouldn’t die.

  Flush with guilt, Jillybean tossed and turned as the night wore on and she dreamed of murder and death and executions until her body glistened with sweat. Lastly, she dreamt of her father. Just as tall and handsome as ever, he walked through Granny Annie’s front door and strode down the hall until he stood in Jillybean’s bedroom.

  “You’ve forgotten something important,” he whispered. “You have to go back before it’s too late.” As he spoke those few short words, his face grew grey and his body twisted and a scream of agony erupted from somewhere around him.

  It was the scream that finally woke her.

  “What did I forget?” she asked, sitting up, still partially in her dream. For a few seconds she waited for an answer, but when it came she didn’t want to hear it.