The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors (28 page)

"Jillybean, get on in," he said through the driving rain. She was just standing there shivering. "Don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid, but this doesn't look like it'll go. And look there's water all in the bottom. Won't it sink? Like blub, blub, blub?"

"We'll keep it close
to shore at first to see," he said. When he put out his hands to her she allowed herself to be lifted over the side. "We have to get you out of the rain. Get in there." He pointed at the crawl space. "Take off your clothes and bundle up in those shirts."

A minute later she said from in the cubby, "They
are kinda stinky. What are you going to use to get dry with, Mister Ram? Ipes says you'll freeze to death if you don't get dry. There's still one t-shirt left."

"Wrap it around your head, Jillybean," Ram ordered. "Don't worry about me." How was he going to get dry? That was a question he would have to worry about later
—unfortunately later would equal to a cold wet night, which in truth was on the verge of becoming the present.

"Hey
Jilly, can you hand out that sail kit. It's the big clear bag." She handed it out with a skinny arm that protruded from what looked like a pile of dirty clothes.

"Thanks," he mumbled, trying to see through the plastic for instructions, and not finding any. It wasn't a professional kit. The owner of the boat had collected a mish-mash of items he thought would come in handy, heavy sewing needles, thick, white thread, an
awl for puncturing and a square of heavy canvas. At the bottom of the bag he finally found something that gave him hope: a wide roll of
Sail Tape
.

"
Hhmm," he said, squinting at the tiny writing on the tape in the fading light. After a minute his shoulders slumped: the sail would have to be dry for the tape to work. He cursed at what he considered a poorly designed product. Seconds later he cursed louder when he pulled back on the sail and saw the extent of the damage. There wasn't enough tape in the whole world to hold together the shreds of white.

"So much for sailing," he said.

"What?" asked Jillybean from in the crawl space.

He squatted in front of the door and looked in; only her eyes were visible. "The sail that's up now is shot. I don't know what to do. We can't really stay here, but we also can't go on."

"You wanna know what Ipes thinks?" she asked, her voice muffled by the t-shirts. Ram had little to lose in hearing advice from a toy, besides the zebra had come up with a few ideas already. He nodded and Jillybean said, "Ipes says we should sleep here. He says you should push us out a little and drop the weighty thing...the
anchor
! That's it. He says that if we are out a bit the monsters won't be able to get us while we sleep. Is that a good plan, do you think?"

"Are you sure it was Ipes' plan and not yours?" Ram asked.

"Yeah, it was Ipes. He's really smart," Jillybean said. She then giggled and added. "Just ask him, he'll tell you all about it."

"Maybe later," Ram said and then shut the door on the girl.

Moving the boat wasn't a problem. He had gained much of his strength back and the boat fairly shot away from the shore egged on by a stiff southerly wind. Too late he discovered that the anchor chain was a knot of rust, frozen by oxidizing chemicals into a ball. He lost two minutes working it free only to find that the infernal chain wasn't hooked to anything!

The little island seemed small when he glanced up in a panic. How deep was the water, he wondered. It seemed too deep for the length of chain, so he added the fifty-feet of cord to the end, tied it off at the gunwale and chucked the anchor in. Then came another worrisome minute
—the anchor didn't catch the bottom as Ram thought it would.

He figured there'd be a little jolt and they'd be stuck in place. Reality was different. The anchor thumped into the black mud far below and then was dragged along like a reluctant dog on a leash.

Ram could do nothing about it. He sat there in a growing depression, lashed by the cold steel rain and bit by the sharpness of the wind. They would blow out to sea; he was sure of it. They would starve or freeze, or the boat would sink under them! Was it his imagination, or was the water in the hull beginning to grow deeper?

After marking the level he stared at the water for long minutes and found that it wasn't getting deeper...or rather it was, but it was from the rain only, which could be bailed overboard. Delighted by this, he looked up to another treat: while he was busy fretting over the concept of sinking, the anchor had finally snagged on something. They were some two-hundred yards off shore, a little further than he hoped, but on the bright side they were free from the zombie menace.

"Scootch all the way over," he said to Jillybean. The crawl space was the shape of a gently curving triangle with a base of about four feet; there wasn't much room. "Also, can I have one of those T-shirts? Thanks...now turn away. I have to get undressed."

"Are you gonna turn the shirt around and wear it like shorts? Ipes said it was a good idea, but it feels like I'm wearing a diaper."

That was the plan. In a few seconds he discovered that she was right; it felt very weird. Still, it was better than freezing in his wet clothes—that is, once he got used to dressing after the fashion of an infant.

After he changed, he rung out their clothes, as well as Ipes who was a saggy bottomed little thing. He then brought out the sail cloth from the plastic bag, nervous that it would be little more than a coarse slab of canvas. It turned out, softer and larger than he could have imagined. When stretched out, it was ten-by-ten and big enough to wrap the two shipmates in a warm cocoon.

With the rain pattering, the boat gently rocking, and the little girl snuggled up, snoring lightly, Ram could barely stay awake. He had much to think about and to consider: mainly how they were going to get back to the safety of the CDC. However that question wouldn't stay latched to his thinking. Instead he thought about Jillybean. Her resilience amazed him. She was mostly bone with a thin layer of skin stretched across, yet nothing fazed her for long; she had bounced back from her food poisoning as if it had never happened. The same was true with every fright that came her way.

They made a good team. He supplied the brawn and the experience, while she had an intuition that was decades beyond her maturity level.

“What am I going to do with you?” he asked. Whenever he wondered about this, he pictured Neil and Sarah. They were the logical choice to raise her: they were good parents and the CDC was a safe place, or so he thought.

Once again he’d be “Uncle Ram.” He smiled at the thought and as he did his head grew warm and his eyes sleepy.

The night passed without either of them even noticing. One second they closed their eyes and the next a murky light filtered into the crawl space to wake them.

"I don't want to get up,
" Jillybean said in a whisper when she saw his eyes flutter open. Off the shore as they were there was no need to whisper, but the survival mechanism was clearly ingrained.

Ram grunted, "Yeah, me neither." Getting up would entail another difficult day of survival; of running and hiding, and probably swimming in freezing waters. Staying curled up in the soft material in the semi-dark held a great appeal; it was sort of like playing hooky from school. “But I can’t,” he moaned. “I got to see if I can get the sail working. Turn away I got to get dressed.”

Getting dressed entailed putting back on the damp clothes from the day before—they were absolutely freezing! Jillybean giggled as he fake cursed.

When he was dressed he crawled out into the morning, stood in six-inches of chilly rainwater and cursed for real. The little island was gone. Sometime during the night the knot he had tied
to the gunwale had given out and they had floated away, pushed out to sea by the prevailing east wind.

“Where did the land go?” Jillybean asked squinting all around them. His “real” cursing had set off alarms and she had dressed hurriedly.

“I have no idea. That way I think,” he said, pointing in the general direction of west. Though the clouds were still heavy and low, the sun’s rays filtered through to irritate his eyes when he faced east. “I just don’t know how far. It could be really far.” He began a quick calculation. “Maybe up to…twenty miles.”

This was a lie to keep her from freaking out as much as he was. He judged the wind to be about fifteen miles-per-hour, and they had been in the crawlspace for ten hours. If the knot had let go right away they could conceivably be a hundred-and-fifty miles away from land. Even a middle-case scenario put them at seventy-five miles away.

And Ram did not know how to sail.

He had some vague ideas and figured if the wind turned around he could point them at the w
ide expanse of the Atlantic seaboard and not fail to hit land. But of tacking, or luffing, or rigging, or even tying knots he was painfully clueless.

Jillybean’s lips pursed. This was her
thinking
face and Ram waited patiently for her or Ipes to come up with an idea. After a moment she glanced up at the mast, taking its measure.

She then turned away and spoke in a low voice, as though talking to the ocean, “But it’s too high. Why can’t Ram do it? Oh…I guess.” She glanced once more at the mast before addressing Ram. “Ipes says I have to climb up there before we do anything. I have to look around. He says you can’t because of your weight. He says you might capsize the boat which means knock it over. But I don’t really
wanna.”

“
It'll be ok,” Ram told her. “I’ll be right here. I’ll catch you if you fall.”

Nothing other than hearing those words would have got Jillybean up the twenty-two feet of mast. Ram lifted her almost half-way, w
hile the remainder she shimmied, with jutting elbows and frogging knees, until she had the masthead butting into her diaphragm.

Pointing to the south of them, she yelled, h
igh-pitched, “There’s a boat.”

Ram hopped up on the bow and squinted, but couldn’t see a thing beyond rolling grey waves.
“Are you sure?”

“It’s a boat or a small island. No, wait it’s a boat for
certain!”

Chapter 28

Sarah

Atlanta, Georgia

The hoist cable
saved her. When the zombie pitched forward and fell, its flailing body twanged off of the thick wire, sending it thudding down, not inches away from Sarah.

Though
they were in a small space, the elevator shaft was so all encompassing black that she couldn’t tell exactly where the zombie was or what it was doing. It was there in the dark, groaning, swimming its feral hands about, trying to feel its way around.

Twice, s
he felt its claws strike her leg; both times she had to bite the inside of her cheek from crying out. For the moment the zombie didn’t know it was in a five-by-five concrete square with two humans.

It would know soon enough. Eve wouldn’t last
. She had begun to squirm. She wasn’t used to being carried on Sarah’s back, and she didn’t like the dark, and she most certainly didn’t like the weird action that occurred during and after their fall. She was on the verge of letting out one of her little cries that her parents had worked so hard to teach her in the hope it would keep her safe.

Without something: a low reassuring whisper, a gentle humming, even a caress, she was going to cry and then the zombie would know.

In the cramped shaft with a deadly creature, this was all the advantage Sarah had. She knew that she had to strike and very quickly. The zombie, on the other hand, was only concerned with getting to its feet. It used the cable to pull itself up. Sarah felt it vibrate and heard it hum.

Then she caught the putrid breath of the creature square in her face. It was standing now, but how close was it? How tall? Where could she strike that would kill
it in an instant? In the black, all she had to work with in order to fix its location was the noise of its moan and the stink of its mouth.

Very slowly Sarah eased her hunting knife from its sheath.

The Beretta was still in its holster, and if she had any chance of getting out of there—not just out of the elevator, but out of the building—it would have to stay in the holster. The third floor was probably packed with zombies by now and a gunshot would have them running to the shaft. She’d be buried in an avalanche of undead.

It had to be the knife and it had to be quick, only where was she to strike! Anything less than a single accurate, piercing blow to the thing’s temple or eye would doom Sarah. It would find her and she didn’t like her chances of a brawl in the dark with a baby strapped to her back.

It was this that had her hesitating, even after the zombie found her. A hand brushed against her shoulder. It left for a brief moment and then came back, this time with too much curiosity.

Sarah could not wait any longer. She struck downward in a diagonal and the knife bit into something. There was blood on her hand, while in the dark the zombie moaned louder than she had ever heard one moan before, yet it did not die.

Again the diseased hands reached for her. They clawed at her coat and she took a step away, sweeping the walls with the back of her arm, trying to get her bearings. Just in front of her there was a thrumming from the cable as the zombie struck it. For instant she had an idea of where the beast was, but then she stepped on one of the backpacks she had tossed down. It was filled with cans that went squirrely beneath her weight and before she knew it, her ankle buckled.

She wasn’t hurt, however she was down on one knee with a zombie almost directly on top of her. It
s arms were out and searching, and worse, Eve had reached her breaking point.

“Eh-eh, eh-eh,” she cried.

The zombie glanced down and Sarah
saw
it!

Tripping on the backpack couldn’t have been more fortuitous. From her vantage she could see the zombie’s outline against the grey gloom washing down from above.

She could see its hands begin to reach and its mouth open. Acting on instinct she slapped the wall to her left. In an instant the thing turned to the sound and Sarah struck for a second time. Now that she had a fixed target she punched the knife blade to the hilt through the thin bone of its temple. It died instantly, slumping gently to the roof of the elevator with the help of Sarah, who guided it down.

Now was not the time to give away her position.

Standing she pulled her baby around so that she once again properly positioned. “You did great, sweetie.”

She soothed Eve until the sound of her sucking on her pacifier came up from up beneath the blanket.
Only then did Sarah stoop and remove the knife from the zombie’s head; as disgusting as it was, there was still a chance she would need it. Next she found the two packs and set them aside; then she ran her hands back and forth on what was the roof of the elevator, searching for the latch to the trap door.

After a brief panic she felt under the still warm body of the zombie and discovered it. In a minute she went fr
om the pitch black of the shaft, to a level of dark beyond even that. Yet she didn’t need light to escape. By feel she found the elevator doors and sunk the bloody knife in its seam. With a light grunt she heaved back, stuck her foot in the crack, sheathed her knife, and then put her entire weight into getting the doors open wider.

They elicited only a single creaky
, metallic shriek; just enough to alert the zombies milling about on the floors above and the few still left on the stairs. They all turned to gaze in her direction, as she sped toward the lobby, but were slower to react than normal. Perhaps they failed to recognize her humanity in the dark, what with the heavy packs slung on her back and the baby hitched in front. Not daring to make eye contact, Sarah walked brusquely past the stairs, looking more like a loaded down Christmas shopper than a woman fearing for her life.

She barely got past the lower steps before the zombies came alive
with louder, excited moans—she'd been spotted! The ones on the stairs, in their haste to feed, came tumbling down and it was Sarah’s great wish that they would all break their necks. She didn’t stay to discover if this was the result.

Out into the chill night she hurried once again. Dotted here and there along the streets like ill-plotted shrubbery were stragglers
, zombies that didn’t seem capable of making up their minds which way to go. She avoided these by heading into the maze of neighborhood side streets, where she found herself safe, but lost after only about twenty minutes.

“Am I really lost?” she whispered to her baby, jiggling up and down in the way that comforted Eve. The unfamiliar street signs implied that she was indeed, however the fact that she had no idea where she was going or how to get there
, suggested otherwise. Being lost hinted strongly that one either had a destination in mind or some reason to journey. In this case she had neither.

“At a minimum I should know what direction I’m going,” she said, looking about. The stars could have told her, only they were hidden by clouds that were clearly in league with the fates trying their best to kill her. This thought she ignored. “Maybe I could orient on…”

She jumped at a very human sound: a slamming car door. Just like that, this simple thump brought out an intense desire for her to run down the street screaming:
Don’t leave me
!

Sarah bit back the urge to cry out, but nothing was going to stop her feet. They took off under her and she was born
e along with the great fear that she’d be too late and she’d be left behind again. A minute later, while crossing a wide boulevard she was amazed to discover she knew exactly where she was: the CDC.

Somehow she had managed to come in a big circle. There was the seven-story main lab and the front gates, and right across from it, settled on the median in the middle of the boulevard was a gold Ford F-250. She knew that truck. As well she knew the big lady crouched down inside it.

“Shondra,” Sarah said in a barely audible tone as she drew close. Shondra lifted her head just a hair above the level of the door frame; when she saw Sarah her eyes went comically big.

“Sarah! Get in. There are zombies in the CDC. Did you know that?”

The blonde climbed in and as she did she cast a look back. “Yeah, I know and I think some of them saw me.”

Ever so slowly,
Shondra rose up again to peer over the door frame. “They did! Get down!”

“Get going,” Sarah shot back. “Don’t just sit there, drive!”

Shondra shook her head. “I can’t. I got high-centered trying to turn around. We’re stuck.”

“Then we got to get out of here
. We gotta leave the truck,” Sarah said, poking her face up to see their situation. It wasn’t good. The CDC was emptying of the dead and all around the streets were clogged. “Do you have a gun?”

Sarah had her
Beretta drawn and held it up. Shondra nodded quickly, her jowls shaking. She took a .38 Police Special from the console and checked the load.

“That’s all you got?” Sarah asked in disbelief
. A lousy six-shooter wasn’t going to cut it.

“
I have a shotgun in the back.” She jerked her thumb to the bed of the truck. It wasn’t going to do them any good back there.

“
Try the truck again!” Sarah cried. Shondra did her best, but the wheels only spun in the air doing nothing but attracting more zombies. While she was at it, Sarah put Eve on the floor at her feet and did her best to cover her up.

“We’re going to have to shoot our way out,” she told
Shondra, who immediately began shaking her head. “Yes. We’ll make a gap and try to make it to the…” She had been about to say the lab, but the germs came to mind. “…to the storage facilities on the east side.”

“I can’t run that far!”
Shondra said. She opened her mouth but just then a grey fist struck the window. More would follow until the windows were destroyed and then they’d be dragged out. This knowledge had Shondra changing her mind. “Ok...ok, let’s do it.”

“Please, Lord be with us,” Sarah said, thumbing off her safety. She grabbed the handle
, kicked open the door and fired off two rounds in quick succession dropping a pair of zombies. At close range she was as deadly as anyone. Five more shots sent the brains of five more zombies ripping into the night yet still the beasts closed in.

“
Shondra! Help me,” she screamed. The woman hadn’t budged from the driver’s seat. Under Sarah’s withering look, she timidly began to roll down her window. Sarah couldn’t spare more than a second watching; she had to concentrate on the zombies right at her door. With her fear mounting, she counted the spent bullets.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen...” At fifteen she reached out and slammed the door closed before going through the automatic motions in reloading. Both Ram and Neil had forced her to practice over and over. She could reload blindfolded.
Shondra couldn’t. Her hands were shaking so badly that she dropped more shells than she managed to put into her pistol.

“You ready to make a dash for it?” Sarah asked.

Shondra shook her head. “It’s not going to work. Listen to Eve! She is crying too hard.” It was true. With all the shooting, the baby was bawling with the full power of her lungs.

“Then, I’ll go alone,” Sarah said, blinking to clear the sudden blurring of her eyes. “You stay down and keep her quiet until I draw them off.”
Shondra didn’t argue other than to shake her head in a very weak display of denial.

The zombies were pounding the doors now with dreadful power. It
wouldn’t be long. Sarah grabbed the door handle, but just then the bigger woman pointed.

“Look!”

A sharp light cut the night. It swept them and then came the roar of an engine. In a second a motorcycle, not more than a dirt bike, was in the street thirty feet away, spinning in short arced circles. Immediately the zombies advanced on it, but the man on the bike only spun sharper.

In the dark, his features were loose and hard to define, but Sarah was almost sure
she knew the man. “Ram?” she yelled from her cracked window.

“Get down! Get down!” he raged. It was Ram. He was there, unarmed save for a golf club and his
motorcycle. When the zombies were within reach, he gunned it forward but only for a few seconds, and then when they closed a second time he spurted on again.

Sarah didn’t see a
fter that. She bent to her daughter in the foot well and was soothing her as best as she could when suddenly her door was flung open. She grabbed the gun that she had set aside, but was too slow. A little girl with flyaway brown hair stood there. She too had reached for the gun, but only to keep from being shot. Their hands overlapped on the hot barrel.

“We have to go,” Jillybean said.

“Who are…” Sarah began, but Shondra interrupted.

“We can’t leave the truck. We’ll die out there.”

At this the little girl turned sharply and stared into the night, her little muscles bunched, ready to send her flying. After a moment she relaxed. “No, they’re all after Mister Ram. It’ll be fine.”

Just then Ram came flying back
on the motorcycle and was surprised to find them all still there. “What’s wrong?”