The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors (35 page)

Ram had his hands bound behind his back
with the same wire he had used on them, and because of this he was led down the stairs. The man carried a flashlight in one hand and had Ram by the collar in the other, while the woman led the way. She had traded out her pistol for a shotgun—a more certain weapon against zombies.

Below the third level Ram was basically heaved over the desk where he knocked the side of his head enough to make him dizzy.
He moaned in pain.

“Stop your fucking faking,” the man said and began pushing him on. “Or I’ll give you…”

Just then a horribly familiar sound came to them from somewhere on the second level. It was the sound of a marble bouncing. Goose bumps flashed across Ram’s skin. They weren’t of excitement; they were of dread. There was only one reason for a marble to be bouncing just then…but that reason couldn’t be possible.

Yet in his heart he knew
that it was possible.

“
Jilly! Don’t do this,” he cried at the top of his lungs. In the silence that followed the bouncing marble kept going, clacking about merrily. “Run away! Get out of here.”

There was no sound but the
marble and the wailing of the undead outside.

Chapter 34

Jillybean

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“He will die without me, Ipes,” Jillybean had said earlier that afternoon.

The stuffed animal shrugged.
I like Mister Neil better. I know he tried to give you to the cult, but he’s actually very nice aside from that. And, he’s very complimentary to zebras, which is a mark of an advanced and fully mature mind
.

“If you like Mister Neil so much maybe you should stay here,” Jillybean countered.

Ipes waived his stubby arms.
But
they will give me to Eve
,
and she slobbers
, Ipes groaned.
I swear she must have Basset Hound somewhere in her ancestry
.

“Then I guess you’re coming with me,” Jillybean said. She watched as Neil pulled Ram aside to chat. “Now’s our chance.” Sarah was busy changing Eve and Sadie was watching the two men and had her back to Jillybean.

With deft movements, the little girl buried her new doll in the blankets, leaving only her hair showing. She then grabbed her backpack and hurried to Ram’s truck. There was no use being coy about what came next—she would either be caught or not. In a quick move she climbed up the side of the truck and slithered beneath the blue tarp.

Now what?
Ipes asked.

“We wait.”

Ipes tapped his toe, or rather he tapped the part of him that represented a hoof. Either way it was a silent tap and one that was all for show.
Do you think he’s in need of saving yet?
Ipes wondered aloud. Jillybean blew out in a huff. Ipes went on,
Why don’t you admit what this really is?

“What this is,
” Jillybean said with her eyes blazing, “is a zebra on the verge of getting a spanking if he doesn’t stop being a pain!”

Nope. This is you trying to force yourself on a grown man. You can’t adopt an adult, just because he reminds you of your father
.

Jillybean did not like the way this conversation was going
, however she was in a mood at being abandoned by Ram again and said, “Why not? Why is it only the adults who get to go about adopting people? If he was a kid, people would be like: oh, he’s all alone, we should adopt him. But since he’s a grode-up we just have to let him be all alone? That doesn’t make…”

Just then she heard Ram walking back to his truck; he sighed continually. Then they were off and despite the tarp flapping above her, Jillybean was very soon cold enough to take out her fancy dress and throw it on over her jeans and ugly
Eagles
sweatshirt.

They stopped after an hour or so. Where they stopped surprised Jillybean. “
Party Palace
! I’ve been here before.”

Don’t you mean we’ve been here before?
Ipes reminded her
. I was there as well
.

She ignored him. Her mind was far away remembering the fairy costume she had worn a year and a half before
on Halloween. It had been pink and silver with gold trim on her fairy wings. Her mom had taken five-thousand pictures and had made Jillybean walk back and forth shaking her wings.

What’s he got there?
Ipes asked a few minutes later. He had his long nose sticking out of the tarp.
Ha! He’s got a monster costume. What’s he going to do with one of them?

Jillybean felt a silly disappointment. Deep in her heart she had hoped that Ram had stopped in at the store to get her something. He watched him try on his costume and later after they had made it into the city she saw him put on makeup.

This is called
betting on the wrong horse
, Ipes said.
Ram’s gone crazy. Neil isn’t crazy, you know. Neil isn’t going to a costume party at night in the middle of a zombie infested…

“
Shhh,” she hissed. Ram had finished his make-up and was right next to the bed of the truck. He took a couple of deep breaths and then began to act like a monster as he walked away.

Maybe I was a bit premature in my diagnosis of his mental facilities
, Ipes allowed as he saw what Ram had done.

“Come on
.” Jillybean crawled out of the truck and went to the cab which Ram had left wide open. After taking off the dress and folding it neatly, she slapped on makeup, making herself look like a sad little monster. Next she happily shredded up her
Eagles
sweatshirt so that it hung off her in tatters. Her hair was already going in every direction and so there was nothing left but to tuck Ipes into the pocket of her backpack and go lurching out into the night.

The hard part was catching up
to Ram when she had to go at a monster’s pace. When they weren’t after prey, they moved with the speed of a vacationing sloth.

She would’ve gone at the dangerous
pace of a slow walk if it hadn’t been for Ipes. The zebra kept her focused.
Slower! Swing one arm. You look too much like a girl; are you trying to get us killed?

After an agonizing time they passed right by the building Ram was in and kept going
, unaware. She was halfway down the block when a cry of someone in pain from behind stopped her in her tracks. Jillybean wasn’t the only one attracted by the sound. The shadows all around came alive with monsters.

Slower!
Ipes cried. She had begun to go faster than was prudent. However she couldn’t go slower. The cry had come from Ram’s lips. He was in trouble just as she knew he would be.

“Sorry, Ipes,” she said as she pulled a magic marble from her pocket
, kissed it, and chucked it across the street. Every monster head turned…except for hers. Instead she took off at a sprint back the way she came. In her wake the monsters weren’t fooled for more than two seconds. It was enough.

Jillybean pelted up to the building, turned the corner and immediately went back to monster-mode: moaning and shambling her
way to the front and into the lobby. Behind her monsters came and began milling around, searching the corners or behind the stray cars or just staring blankly.

You’ve trapped us
, Ipes accused.
What are we going to do when we want to come back out?

“
We’ll see,” Jillybean replied. She didn’t have the luxury to dwell on five minutes from that moment when there was so much danger in the next two. Like a shot she sped up the stairs. Her legs were too short to go two at a time so instead she pumped them furiously and arrived in time to hear two people, a man and a woman discussing Ram’s fate.

“What are they going to do to him, Ipes?” she asked. “What do the mean by grey meat? Are they going to turn him into a monster?”

Yes, I think so. But we...they’re coming! Back down stairs,
he hissed. The pair rushed back the way they came.
Stop
, Ipes ordered just after they slid over the top of the desk. He studied it for five agonizing seconds—its height, its width, the edging scarred with age and abuse.

“What is it?” Jillybean asked.

The zebra hushed her for being too loud and yet not a second later he practically screamed:
This won’t work at all!

“Work for what?”

My plan
.

“What’s your plan?”

Ipes grabbed his spiky Mohawk of a mane with both hooves and cried,
I don’t know! We have to separate Mister Ram from his attackers. If he goes outside with them, he’ll die for sure
.

“What?
” Jillybean asked, confused. “If he goes out all alone, he’ll die too.”

Don’t be silly
, Ipes said.
He dressed like a monster, remember? Just like you. So what we need is to get them to let Ram go out alone
.

“They won’t do it,” Jillybean replied. “They’ll want to watch him die. They’ll…”
Five floors above them they heard Ram and his captors on the stairs.

We have two minutes
, Ipes hissed.
Think of something!

“Me?” Jillybean
cried. “You’re the one who always comes up with the plans.”

I’m all out of ideas
, Ipes said in a little voice.
Sorry.

“There has to be something,” Jillybean said. “We’ll try in here.”

The door to the second floor hall was yanked back and half off its hinges. The little girl went through it and found herself in a typical hall of a high-rise apartment building—other than doors and ratty carpeting it was empty. She rushed to the first door on the right, which also sat open.

Her eyes ran over the debris of someone’s life. The place had been ransacked for food or weapons, however beneath the chaos was a normal apartment: In the main room a TV on a stand was the dominant feature, all the furniture pointed its way. In the dining room was an old table sitting on older tile. In the kitchen was a spray of spilt salt on the counter beneath cabinets hanging open like so many mouths. On the walls were pictures and a calendar
and knick-knacks and dust.

There’s nothing here we can use
, said Ipes gloomily.
Too bad. We can hide here at least. Maybe gather up those clothes and bury ourselves until…Jillybean? Hello?

The girl stood with her mind working with the exactness of a Swiss watch; each piece of her shaky plan coming to her, unfolding one after another, fitting together seamlessly.

First the table. It had to be cleared and a corner raised. A book was too much, but the blade of a butter knife too little. With a grunt she turned the knife around and set the table leg on it. She tested the marble; it rolled too quickly.

Ipes saw where this was going.
The salt in the kitchen!

Jillybean rushed to the other room and scraped up all she could. It was barely a teaspoon full. It wouldn’t slow
the marble down enough unless…

You build a track
, Ipes said finishing her thought.
But you better hurry.

She couldn’t spare even a second to say: No Duh!

Breathless, she ran to the table and spread the salt down it in a long thin line—it was a very sparse, which meant she would be cutting things close. Next she grabbed up a pair of pants from the floor and a sock and two shirts. These she stretched out right next to the line of salt, leaving barely an inch gap.

Lastly she went to the high end of the table and stood poised with the magic marble
ready to roll.

Do it!
Ipes screamed in her mind.

“
Ssh,” Jillybean said. “I’m trying to listen.” The three people on the stairs came closer and closer, and all the while Ipes was going crazy.

Now! Roll the marble, please. Before it’s too late
.

With her stomach knotted Jillybean counted to five and then let the marble go. It bumped
over the salt, shuddering with each grain and picking up speed with agonizing slowness.

Jillybean couldn’t afford to watch its progress. Stooping to snatch up a black sweater she sped for the stairs, arriving while the three were only a flight above her head. Without checking her momentum she ran up
wards.

Wrong way,
Jilly
! Ipes wailed.

Five steps along she found the desk wedge
d sideways, it was little more than a solid shadow in the dark. By feel only she clambered around it and curled herself in the space where a chair would normally go and then the adults were right there.

A grunt sounded in the dark, which was followed by the soft sound of someone light sliding across the top of the wood a bare two inches over Jillybean’s head. A light flashed; the beam making crazy angled shadows in the cubby. Then there was a louder thud on the desk, causing her to jump in fright.

They had thrown Ram over the desk. He began to groan.

“Stop your fucking faking,” the man who had taken him prisoner said after he slid over as well. “Or I’ll give you…”

Finally the marble had made its way to the edge of the table and now threw itself onto the old tile. It was a loud sound in the still night, but not as loud as Ram, who began yelling for Jillybean to run. In the commotion she peeked out from her hiding place and saw the two people with Ram: a man and a woman, both of whom were black. The man had a scoped deer rifle across his back, which he promptly yanked off. The woman had a shotgun that was so large it looked like a bazooka to Jillybean.

“Shut the fuck up,” the man said as he bashed Ram in the stomach with the butt of his gun. Ram dropped to his knees on the landing and started to make a noise as though he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to throw up or choke.

“He brought someone with him,” the woman said, keeping her voice low.

“No shit,” the man replied. “
With a name like Jilly, it’s probably a girlfriend. Watch him. Bash him in the face if he says anything.”

The man turned off the flashlight and before Jillybean could get her night-eyes back he had disappeared down the hall, moving with such soft steps that the sharpest ears could not pick out his tread. Whether it was the loss of the man’s presence, which was significant, or the loss of the light, which was greater still, the woman quickly grew afraid. She swung her head from Ram on the edge of the landing
, to the man creeping down the hall.