The Apocalypse Fugitives Page 4

  This seemed so logical that Neil relaxed and concentrated on driving through the close set forest. He even smiled right up until they pulled into sight of the glen and saw that it was missing one army captain. The Humvee went dead quiet.

  "Stay here," Neil said, getting out and drawing his .38. Very slowly he made a circuit of the glade. The forest was silent and empty; there was not a single zombie "alive" or dead anywhere. In the clearing there was only a half-dug grave, the black entrenching tool cast off to the side, and a single brass cartridge case from Grey's M4. It sat gleaming up at Neil and for some reason he picked it up and sniffed it.

  "Anything?" Sadie asked. Against orders she and Jillybean had come creeping up. "Any tracks or blood?"

  He hadn't seen any blood, but he had seen a few tracks in the freshly turned dirt. They held little meaning to him. "Those are Grey's combat boots but the others are just normal shoes. I guess that's good, right? Soldiers weren't here at least. They were probably made by zombies."

  "You're jumping on conclusions," Jillybean told him. "Soldiers nowadays can wear normal shoes, I think. And those aren't monster feetprints. Most of the monsters have lost their shoes by now, you ever notice that? And even if they didn't, they are always stumbling so their feetprints wouldn't be like that. But look." She switched Ipes to her other arm and pointed at a scrape in the soft grass that was a few steps away from the grave. "A monster could have made that, I guess."

  Getting on her hands and knees she bent down close to it. She even went so far as to sniff the mark. "I wish I knew more about this sort of tracking thing," she remarked. "And Ipes is no help. He keeps saying: Do I look like a lion? Sheesh."

  "So what does this all mean?" Sadie asked. "Are you saying somebody killed or captured Captain Grey? Because we were just talking about hunting. Couldn't he have shot an animal and gone after it?"

  Neil shrugged while Jillybean pursed her lip, thinking. She then got up and went back to the grave, turned, and paced out six of her largest steps toward the scuff mark. She made a face of disappointment.

  "There's nothing that tells us he's dead," she said, taking six more of the large steps. "And I don't think an animal would wander up while he was digging. Ipes agrees. He says animals don't ever do that. They go away from humans, even nice humans like Captain Grey."

  She walked in a straight line away from them, keeping her eyes cast down, studying the earth as she went. After a few yards, she stopped and made the same face as before. Five more steps and she was at the border of pink flowers where she cried: "Ooh! Look the flowers are mashed up."

  "And?" Neil asked. He hurried over and looked down at the flowers—someone had stepped on them. "Are you saying you can find meaning in mashed flowers? Because that's pretty far-fetched coming from someone with no tracking experience."

  Before she replied, Jillybean walked a few more steps into the forest and pointed at the ground. "Another scuff mark. Captain Grey did that, I'm sure. He leading us to him," she announced as though it was an obvious fact.

  Sadie looked at the accumulated "evidence" and said, "One gunshot, a few marks in the dirt and some stepped on flowers? If he was captured why aren't there any signs of a struggle or blood or anything? I think this time your imagination has gotten a hold of you, Jillybean. I'm betting it was a deer. Some deer will come right up to people, and also deer don't care if they step on flowers."

  Jillybean looked exasperated and said to her zebra, "I know, Ipes...I know. But that would be mean." She then sighed and said: "Fine. Ipes says that you are thinking with wishes. Oh, wait, he wanted me to say you are wishfully thinking."

  "It's wishful thinking," Neil told her. "But in this case, I don't think Sadie is."

  "Well, I'm not wishful thinking," Jillybean said. "I'm thinking-thinking. There's a word for it...not intuition. It's different, like when you use thoughts to figure stuff out instead of having clues."

  "Deductive reasoning?" Neil asked. By Jillybean's blank expression, he could tell it wasn't the term she was looking for. He tried, "Logic?"

  She pointed both of her little index fingers at him and exclaimed, "That's the word. Logic is what means Captain Grey didn't shoot a deer. Where are the deer feetprints? Deers leave feetprints. Where is the deer blood if he was shot? Would a deer really come into an open area with a man working on digging a hole? I don't think so and neither does Ipes. Also, if there was a deer that runded away, how come there are feetprints in the dirt that are from people? Whose are they?"

  "I don't know," Sadie said.

  "Ok, so maybe there wasn't a deer," Neil allowed. "But does that mean Grey was taken by force?"

  "Maybe not, but my logic thinks it does," Jillybean said. "We can test the idea, too. If Captain Grey left those marks on the ground on purpose, then there will be more. If they were on accident, then they'll stop."

  All three of them gazed deeper into the forest. "Wait here," Neil said. He had gone barely twenty feet before he saw a boot print as clear as day in a patch of muddy dirt. "Crap," he whispered. Grey could move as stealthy as a leopard and pass without a trace when he wanted to. The logical conclusion was he had left that print on purpose. He wanted to be followed.

  "So what do we do?" Sadie asked after he came back to the edge of the glade. "We go after him, right?"

  Neil turned the question over in his mind. His first thought was that he would go after Captain Grey alone, but logic didn't support that conclusion. "No, we won't be going. If we're going to be logical about this, and I suppose it's about time we were logical about something, then I think logic suggests that Jillybean should go...alone."

  Sadie's jaw dropped and her mouth hung open. "Huh? How is that logic? She's six-years-old!"

  "She's seven," Neil corrected, "And a very smart seven-year-old. Look, I would send you, Sadie but with your legs blistered from the fire, you can barely walk. I can't go because if something happened to me, I would be leaving an infant, a child, and a teenage girl alone to fend for themselves. We all can't go because of Eve. We have to protect the weakest among us; that's what Captain Grey would say."

  "But Jillybean...alone..." Sadie was practically spluttering.

  "Yes," Neil said, feeling the sharp fear of leadership. It was a different kind of fear than what he was used to and it was much worse. He'd much rather be pissing himself, following tracks into some unknown danger than suggesting this. Neil took a steadying breath. "She's been alone before and she knows how to take care of herself. More importantly, I think Captain Grey left those tracks for her to find. He knew I would never have found them."

  "And he knew that I wouldn't have understood them," Sadie added, biting the inside of her lip.

  "I'll go," Jillybean said. She looked down at her stuffed zebra and added, "It'll be ok, Ipes. I'll go as a monster. Everyone knows I'm the best monster."

  Chapter 5

  Deanna Russell

  The Island

  Naked, save for a pair of high-heels, Deanna went out into the cool night where her skin goosed up and her nipples went hard. She shivered as well but that was from more than just the chill breeze sweeping across The Island. She was on the knife's edge of panic. Any second she expected Sergeant Robinski to come storming out of his quarters to light up the dark with his rage.

  She hurried with uncertain, but quick steps toward the bridge that led to the second island, walking with her chin turned practically over one shoulder and her heart in her throat. It was a wonder she didn't scream when two soldiers approached her from the shadows.

  Instead she began to babble excuses: "I'm supposed to be here," she said, clutching the puke-smelling dress to her bare bosom. "I mean I'm supposed to be with, uh the sergeant. But there was an accident and I was just going to change. My dress got...it, I threw up on it and..."

  Her voice petered into nothing as she realized these weren't actual soldiers. She squinted in the dark and saw they were too slim for soldiers and that their faces were too soft and their hands too delicate; also
they smelled of perfume and soap.

  To her great surprise one of them hissed in a high voice, "Deanna, shut the hell up." It was Mindy Leeds.

  Deanna's mouth fell open as the other woman with Mindy grabbed her arm and whispered, "Come on. We're meeting at the motorpool."

  Up close Deanna saw that this was Bessy Kendel, the woman who had, for weeks on end, begged Deanna to get the keys, only she had been too afraid of the repercussions to even consider it...but then the baby had come and changed everything.

  Bessy turned her around and started marching toward the motorpool, completely unconcerned over the fact that Deanna was stark naked. Deanna tried to pull back. "Wait, I can't go yet. I have to get another outfit. This one is..."

  "Hush!" Bessy ordered. She began to pull Deanna along again. "We have something for you to wear already, so don't worry about it."

  Deanna almost asked how they knew she'd need new clothes, but held back, figuring it was all part of the master plan. Bessy's "Great Escape" is how Deanna thought of the plan and it made sense that someone had swiped a few sets of soldier clothes to help the women blend in. Who had stolen the clothes she didn't know. Everything was very hush-hush and for good reason.

  Leaving The Island was still permissible, but almost no one ever tried. The Colonel made you leave with only the clothes on your back, and sometimes not even with them. The last woman who voluntarily left had been whipped within an inch of her life for some made up crime. She had walked off The Island with her head high and blood running down her like a curtain of red. She came back two days later—as one of them. The red blood was gone; she had become as grey and stiff as a rock.

  Compared to some she'd had it easy. One women convicted of theft was lashed to ribbons and then hung by the wrists from one of the tree branches that stood out over the river. The zombies ate her from the feet up; it took her five hours to die.

  That's why Deanna hadn't agreed to the whole crazy escape until the little baby inside her had forced her to, and now, supposedly, she was the lynchpin to the entire plan. There were only three sets of keys to the motorpool and Sergeant Robinski was the only choice left to the escapees. The other two sets were in the hands of officers who had their own personal whores, girls who still thought they were special in some way and weren't about to give up their privilege.

  Deanna use to think she was special. Time, tears, and pain had cured her of that malignant fantasy. In their eyes she was nothing, or less than nothing, if that was possible and for months she had fully embraced the idea that all she was good for in this world was sucking dick, but here she was, the lynchpin! A woman with the most necessary and dangerous part of the job...or so she thought.

  As the three of them drew up to the gates of the motorpool other women crept out of the shadows. Some hefted large boxes, others bore jugs of water or crates of food—some even had guns! Deanna shuddered to think what they had to go through to get them.

  Suddenly, stealing keys from a dull-witted sergeant seemed insignificant.

  She handed them to Mindy who ran forward and started working the different keys into the lock at the gate, looking for the right one. While she watched, Melanie found her and wrapped her in a tight hug. "You did it, I knew you would."

  "Yeah," Deanna said, nervously, shifting from foot to foot. "But what happens if Robinski notices that the keys are gone?"

  "It's a chance we all are taking, Dee."

  Just then Mindy found the right key and seconds later thirty two women rushed forward and slipped through the gates; Deanna was carried along with them like a toy sailboat on a windy pond. The group bustled into the maintenance building and then stood clumped together as Mindy and Bessy went to the office and unlocked that door as well.

  They came out, each with a handful of loose keys.

  "Kay and Melanie!" Bessy called when she had found the right ones.

  Melanie gave Deanna's hand a nervous squeeze and then stepped forward with Kay Gallagher. Bessy nodded once to them and said, "The two five-tons. You know the ones. Don't start the engines until my signal." She handed a key to each of the women, who ran off without looking back. The remaining keys she shoved into the cargo pocket of her pants. Strictly speaking, military vehicles don't need keys to be started; there is simply an ignition button that turns the engine over when pressed, however all the vehicles in the motorpool had inch-thick chains on their steering wheels to keep them from being taken for a joyride by rambunctious soldiers.

  Bessy's gaze swept the remaining women. "Where's Tina and Gloria?"

  Everyone looked at one another as if Tina and Gloria were among them but in disguise. Someone made a crack to look in the bushes; it wasn't a secret that the two women weren't just bunk mates, they were bed mates as well.

  "We're still ten minutes ahead of schedule," Mindy said, trying to be reassuring. "Deanna was quicker than we thought she'd be."

  "Right," Bessy said. "Ok, we get started without them. Veronica, get those uniforms passed around. Mindy, you go out to the gate and keep an eye out for latecomers."

  Veronica, a bosomy twenty-year-old, and two assistants went through the boxes and handed out the uniforms. The camouflaged BDUs were pinned at the cuffs and ankles and were so large they hung like limp canvas on the women. Still, in the dark they looked somewhat like soldiers; close enough to pass at a distance.

  When the women were almost all dressed, Tina and Gloria, hand-in-hand, rushed into the room. "Sorry we're late," Tina said. "My man wouldn't finish up. He thought he was doing me some sort of favor with his quote-unquote loving." She smirked and Gloria nudged her with her shoulder.

  "Thank God, those days are over with," Bessy said. "One way or the other, we're all done with that as of tonight."

  The women gave a nervous little cheer, all save Deanna who was just noticing that shoes hadn't been included with the uniform. Everyone else had dressed for the occasion in sneakers or comfortable flats, while she had only five-inch heels. What would happen if they had to run?

  "Oh God, why did I agree to this," she said in a painful whine. Her chest had begun to hurt.

  Bessy suddenly appeared at Deanna's side and grabbed her arm, forcefully. She spoke directly into her ear "Hush! Don't you start, or you'll cause a panic."

  "These are my only shoes," Deanna hissed, holding up her heels. "What happens if we have to run? What happens if there's zombies?"

  In the dark, the lines of stress across Bessy's forehead looked like deep ruts in a dirt road. "Look, we never said everything would be perfect. Suck it up, alright? We got trucks. It'll be ok."

  Suck it up? Deanna swayed in place when Bessy left her side.

  "Ok ladies," Bessy said just loud enough to be heard over the rustle of women. "Give me two lines."

  After months of living on a military installation it took only seconds for them to sort themselves into two lines of sixteen women each. Bessy looked the women up and down before pulling Joslyn Reynolds out of one line and sticking her next to Deanna. "We need three guns in the back of each vehicle," Bessy said. "Remember, shoot at anything that shoots at you."

  Joslyn was shaking like a leaf; in her hand was a big black pistol. Deanna was immediately jealous; the only weapon she had were the useless shoes in her hands.

  "Are you a good shot?" she asked Joslyn.

  "Uh-uh. My husband was the gun nut. I only shot a few times. I don't think I can hit anything, I tell you. Shit, I'm scared."

  "Hush," Mindy ordered, coming back down the line like a drill sergeant to glare at little Joslyn.

  "Here we go," Bessy said from the door. She pulled a handgun from her BDUs and held it pointing at the floor. "I'm riding shotgun in the first vehicle and Mindy will ride in the second. The rest of you, line one get in the first vehicle, line two, the second. Once in, stay low and for God's sake keep your mouths shut. Line one, go."

  The woman at the very front of the line took a step back instead of forward and Bessy had to reach out and pull her to get her feet movin
g. The fear in the lines was electric; there was not a woman among them that didn't look like she was about to bolt. A number of them had begun to pant and behind Deanna, Joslyn was whimpering. Deanna felt a stab of anger at this, unjustly thinking that someone with a gun shouldn't be so afraid.

  The lines of women were snaking between the many army vehicles when suddenly, the engines of two trucks rumbled into life. A woman in Dee's line stopped, causing a chain reaction of people bumping into the person in front of them. Deanna felt the hard barrel of the pistol Joslyn was carrying jab her in the back.

  "Watch it," she whispered.

  "I can't do this," Joslyn's whimpered. "They'll kill us. They'll hang us Dee."

  "It'll be ok," Deanna said, taking the smaller woman's free hand and pulling her to the truck. "Besides, you got a gun. At least you can fight back."

  Joslyn seemed just as afraid of the gun as she did of getting caught by the Colonel's men. She was in such a state that she had to be practically lifted into the back of the truck. Her hands felt as though they had been greased and Deanna had to grip her by her green army shirt to pull her in.

  When the heavy tail gate was slammed in place, the truck immediately lurched forward unevenly. Someone cried out, "Oh God!"

  "Shut up!" another ordered. It was hard to see who spoke. The back of the truck was covered in a heavy canvas that blocked out most of the starlight. It was impossible to tell who anyone was. Deanna was crushed between two people while there was a third practically draped all over her. She didn't mind. It made her feel safer knowing there was something between her and a bullet.

  Minutes passed as the trucks made their way down the length of The Island. In the dark they could hear men they passed mutter:

  "What the hell?"

  "They doin' night patrols now?"

  "Where the fuck they going?"

  The women bit their lips and huddled closer to one another—all save Joslyn. She squirmed and whimpered, and finally, when the truck started to shimmy as it crossed the frail-looking pontoon bridge over the Illinois River, she blurted out, "I can't do this! I can't. Here, Dee, take the gun, I don't want it anymore."