The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) Read Online Free PDF Page A

can make up your mind. You’re the leader here, not me.” He suddenly smiled and then chuckled as if the idea of Neil being leader was humorous.  Neil glared and Grey laughed harder for a moment before saying: “It’s not you, Neil...ok, it’s a little you. I was just picturing when you said: We fight! It got all quiet and you should have seen Fred Trigg. He was ducking behind Mike Gates like a kid hiding behind his mother’s skirt.”
    Deanna didn’t share in the laughter. “They were all like that,” she groused. “I was embarrassed for you, Neil. After all you’ve done for them, they cowered and let you hang out to dry. Jillybean was right, they’re like sheep.”
    They were like sheep in a way, Neil had to admit. After so many days of being hounded and persecuted, the renegades had a haunted look about them, as if they were on the verge of giving up and accepting whatever crap that came their way without a fight. Neil wasn’t close to giving up, and couldn’t understand why any of them would want to. So, things hadn’t gone according to plan and perhaps their lives hadn’t been a picnic, but what had they really lost? To Neil, the damage to Jillybean’s mind was the biggest loss the group had sustained while escaping from the River King. Strangely, the injuries to his face didn’t concern him, while the deaths of Big Jim and the cage fighters registered only a passing sadness. Constant death had inured him and had turned him cold.
    But they all needed Jillybean. She squatted next to the back door of the barn, her knees jutting, frog-like from beneath her yellow sundress. Without Ipes clutched in the crook of her arm, there was an air of loneliness about her. Sadie stood near, rocking Eve who was going through a bottle with her usual quiet concentration, but no one else got too close.
    Neil had made sure to keep Jillybean away from the others as much as possible. Few knew that Ipes was gone and that there was something evil taking up residence in her mind. She was hard to put up with, changing personalities in a blink, or more often than not, living with both going at the same time.
    There were times when he would look at her and see plots and schemes bubbling up behind her blue eyes. In the three days since she lost Ipes, her eyes had changed. Gone was the innocence. Now, they were devoid of emotion, except hate, that is. If looks could kill …how many times had he heard that old cliché? With Jillybean, it seemed true. Half the time she looked his way, Neil was sure she was actually contemplating his murder. He tried to laugh it off when it happened, and yet, at the same time his balls would try to crawl up into his body.
    The group didn’t need to know any of this, although Neil wondered whether it would really matter. They were all very pro Jillybean now. Regardless of the fact that it had been Neil and Deanna who had freed Captain Grey and the cage-fighters and it had been Sadie who had found the secret pontoon bridge that had been instrumental in gaining the release of the renegades, their rescue from the hands of the River King had been chalked up totally to Jillybean. The thinking went: if the rescuers needed rescuing, then the ultimate rescuer was to be given credit. And this hadn’t been the first time she had rescued them. Strictly speaking, they held her in awe and, if she had been only a little older, she could have been queen of the little group.
    It was a scary thought to Neil.
    “Sheep or not, I still have to figure a way to get them to safety,” he said. “So, I have one vote for going the long way and one for the short. That’s just great. I was secretly hoping to just go along with whatever you two wanted.”
    “It’s not easy being the leader,” Grey said. Suddenly he clapped Neil on the back and added: “I’ll be honest with you, when you were first elected, I figured I’d be running the group, using you as a figure head, but I underestimated you. So far you’ve proven