With a deep breath, Jillybean leaned forward, nearly choking herself until she stuck both hands beneath her collar. Ipes urged her on and she began to take slow plodding steps, the three barbells scraping along behind her. Collectively, they were heavier than she was, and soon her legs were shaking and her breath was ragged and harsh. A city block was all she could manage before she felt as though she was going to collapse again.
One more block, Ipes urged. You can do this. You’re almost there.
“Almost…where?” she gasped.
Ipes was slow to answer, and when he did, he wouldn’t look her in the eye. It’s a surprise. That’s what the guard said. They both knew it would be a terrible surprise.
Jillybean turned around so that she was facing the man with the whip. He was properly ugly: nose too big, mouth too small, a chin that dribbled toward his neck, making him look weak despite his height. He sneered at her, showing gnarly, unbrushed teeth. In every way he so perfectly conformed to her visual paradigm of evil that she was struck by the notion that perhaps he wasn’t real.
“Like Ipes,” she said to herself. She knew he wasn’t real. For starters, stuffed animals couldn’t walk or talk, and even if they could, she had buried Ipes by a river a thousand miles away. And if he was an imaginary phantom created by her broken mind, how could she not question the reality of the Corsair? Or the ugly crowd? They were shouting lewd comments and cracking jokes. Some were drinking and some were drunk. All were filthy and hideous. They were all calling on the whip-man to, “Get her again!”
There was a good chance that none of them were real either. “Because who acts like this?” she muttered.
You know. It was Sadie speaking from the crowd. There was sweat in her hair, blood running down her arms and her Goth-clothes were hanging off her in tatters. She had taken the brunt of the whipping. People are like this. They’ve always been like this. You know history better than anyone.
Sadly, Jillybean did know history. She had studied it and thus knew the evil inside mankind had a long tradition. From the terrifying depredations of the Mongols, to the sixty-million Hindus slaughtered by Muslim invaders, to the massacre of the Jews by the Nazis, humans have proven over and over again that, as a species, they were rarely more than one generation away from regressing back into an uncivilized, cruel barbarism.
The whip-man began to draw back his weapon again. Jillybean sighed, wrapped her right hand around the chains, took up a grip with both hands and began heaving backwards. She went quickly now that she was using fresh muscles. The chains bit into the bare flesh of her arm, and strangely, that was okay. It was worth it to see the crowd’s disappointment. They were hoping she’d be whipped to shreds.
Most of them, that is. Scattered here and there among them were slaves, both male and female. They watched with drawn lips and sad eyes. They knew the terror and the pain. Some cheered along with the rest, but for the most part it was an act.
Jillybean spotted one she knew. The girl was young with dark, haunted eyes. She had belonged to the Cadaver. Jillybean nodded to the girl and kept going. There were other slaves she recognized as well. She saw at least eight of the Black Captain’s sex slaves, and his two Hispanic kitchen slaves. Further on, she saw the blacksmith, Harper Kountz and his gangly slave, who had only been referred to as “Jeff.” The two pushed forward and gawked, but mostly at the golden collar. They could be heard exclaiming over it.
The slaves were mostly an interest to Jillybean simply as a way of taking her mind off the pain radiating throughout her body. Her whip-tortured flesh zinged and burned as if she were on fire, but what hurt more than anything were her bare feet. Her soles had been beaten with a rod and her toes hammered; they ached terribly, especially when she stepped on the rocks and glass that littered the road.
A glance back showed her that her ordeal was almost over…and that a new one was about to begin.
Don’t look! Ipes ordered, as the crowd began to hiss and point. The little zebra was riding on one of the barbells as if it were a horse. Just keep your eyes on me at all times and we’ll get through this. The temptation to look was very great, and it was made all the more unbearable as Sadie openly stared, her face draining of blood.
After a few more feet, Jillybean was grabbed by rough hands and hauled around. She had dragged her weights to a Lutheran church. At one time it had been a fine, large, white structure, with a steeple and tall clear windows. Now it was a burned-out husk, splashed with graffiti and what was probably more of the human excrement that decorated so much of the town. Several shapes hung from the windows and steeple. To Jillybean they looked…
Listen to Ipes, Sadie said, suddenly appearing among the guards. Don’t look. Keep your eyes on Ipes.
The tiny zebra was plopped on the ground square in front of her. Obediently, she stared straight at him.
“The Queen has arrived at last!” the Black Captain said in a thundering voice that could be heard over the crowd. “All hail!” He wore clothes that were so deeply black that Jillybean couldn’t guess their material. His skin was chocolate velvet and his smile pure snow. He was at the height of his power now. His enemies were crushed and scattered and his hold on the world growing stronger after his initial stumbles.
More jeers and catcalls from the crowd only made his smile go wider. The Black Captain let it go on for a full minute before raising his hands for silence. “Tell us, your Highness, what do you think of your castle?”
When she refused to look up, brawny men with unkind hands yanked her head back. Ipes was screaming for her not to look and Sadie was trying her best to sink Jillybean into the darkness, but it was too late. Jillybean had seen the dead bodies of her captains: Steinmeyer and McCartt. There was also Gerry the Greek, and next to him was a small body that she feared was that of Emily Grey, then she saw that it was missing an arm. It was Aaron Altman hanging by his neck, his fish-belly white skin sagging as though it were about to slide off of him.
In the exact middle of the building, hanging squarely over the double doors was Stu Currans. Unlike the others, he wasn’t hanging by the neck, he had been nailed to the siding like a modern-day Jesus. Except for his face, his flesh had been peeled away and now blood formed a tacky pool directly in front of the doors. If she was going to be forced inside, she would have to trail her bare feet right through it.
Jillybean’s legs went right out from beneath her, and her bruised knees cracked on the asphalt. She didn’t feel the pain or hear the howls of laughter. Her mind was slipping into darkness, a darkness that was impossible to define. It had no borders; no true beginning and most certainly no end. The beginning was only an unnatural dimness, and she wanted to scurry within its black bosom, only there was a face within it, a sneering face much like her own.
Not yet, it whispered and shoved her back out into the light. You aren’t broken enough, yet.
“I am,” Jillybean begged. But she wasn’t, not yet.
The Black Captain gazed fondly down at her. She was a wreck: wild hair gone, fancy black clothes ripped from her back; her flesh scorched, bruised, slashed; her smug, know-it-all attitude replaced by blubbering insanity. One moment she was spitting incoherent curses, the next she was sitting blank-eyed, mumbling to herself. In his eyes, she was perfect. She demonstrated to the world the extent of his power.
“I am?” he asked. “What are you? Hmm?” She wouldn’t look at him. She only stared fixedly on a spot on the ground, her head bobbing as if the bones in her neck had been replaced by a spring. “I tell you what you are, you’re a queen. You’re the Queen of the Slaves.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s have the crown!”
Harper Kountz took a box from Jeff’s hands and pushed through to the Black Captain who reached inside and took out an abomination. The crown was a thick gold circle studded with human teeth and from which fourteen bleached rib bones jutted up. She wanted to scream and back away, but the heavy hands were on her again, holding her down.
“And now the robe,” the Cap
tain said. He smiled easily at her as a pale Joslyn Reynolds hurried forward with another box, held out at arm’s length, keeping it as far from her face as she could. “Let her see it, Jos. Come on, don’t be squeamish.” Whereas the crown had a sickly art to it, the bones being sanded smooth and the gold polished to a high shine, the robe was ghastly. It was a dusky grey-white with crude stitches holding the uneven patches together; no one had bothered to shave the hair from it. The robe was made of human flesh. Stu’s flesh.
Jillybean vomited on the ground.
Chapter 5
Bainbridge Island, Washington
As her daughter was wracked by surges of panic, Deanna Grey had her own issue to overcome: paranoia.
Deanna had known since the day her daughter had been kidnapped that there was at least one more Corsair spy on the island. When she first imagined the person, she had pictured an evil, skulking coward, someone afraid to risk their own skin. Now she knew that the picture was way off. Far from being a coward, the spy was fantastically brazen.
She, and Deanna now knew for certain it was a she, had come into Deanna’s home! Not only that, she had waltzed into the prison and killed Gina Sanders! Then she had slaughtered Norris Barnes, and Norris had been a big man with huge fists, each the size of Deanna’s head. Anyone who could do these things was no skulking coward. She was exceedingly dangerous, and what made her doubly so was that the spy could be anyone.
The fog that laid over Bainbridge was not as dense as it was across the southern part of the Sound. The heavy mist was like something out of a horror movie, which didn’t help Deanna’s paranoia one bit. She gripped the hunting knife in her pocket with a little more force, ready to pull it out and shank the first person to jump out at her.
Of course, no one did and no one was likely to. The spy could have been killed the night before without a problem, so why would she decide to come back and kill her right there on the street where she could be caught? This was a reasonable question which didn’t matter a bit. Everyone knew that paranoia and reason were polar opposites, and so Deanna held onto the knife as if her life depended on it.
Her purposefully quiet steps took her past the New Peking Panda, where the council was nervously waiting for her, each of them afraid that maybe she had been killed as well. Every morning seemed to bring a fresh horror, and yet they said nothing, not even to each other. They acted almost as if addressing the issue would make it worse.
Deanna couldn’t stand their weakness and had no problem letting them stew longer as she made her way to the pretty, little home where her friend Veronica Hennesy lived.
The big blonde was feeling her own strain of paranoia and kept the chain on her door as she peeked out. “Oh, it’s you,” she gushed in relief when she saw Deanna. Veronica was dressed in slacks and a white blouse, which was odd enough for a Saturday morning. What made it even more so was that her great mane of platinum blonde hair was curled. She laughed uneasily and fumbled with the chain, a chain she hadn’t once used in the last ten years. “What are you doing here? Is there anything wrong?”
The two women exchanged quick, rigid smiles before their eyes stole past each other to nervously take in the background. Veronica looked alarmed at the mists, thinking it could hide an entire company of assassins.
If anything, Deanna was even more frightened. A shadow had moved in Veronica’s living room. “Who’s in there with you?”
Veronica stiffened and her nervous eyes confessed her embarrassment. “In here? With me? I-I-I…it’s no one really.”
The shadow loomed, growing larger. Deanna’s grip on her knife turned slick with sweat and she had just started to slide it out when Paul Daniels stuck his unkempt head out from behind the wall separating the foyer from the living room. “Don’t be like that V,” he chided.
“Paul!” Deanna said, surprised. “Um, good morning.” Paul had been hot after Veronica for years. His prospects had dimmed with each passing winter as his gut slowly increased in size and his lower cheeks elongated, gradually forming jowls. Despite this, he was not an ugly man. Ten years before he had been big and strapping, fearless and tough. He had been a man’s man, loud and quick to laugh, especially at his own jokes, very few of which were ever funny. He gave crushing handshakes, hearty thumps on the back, and loved to mash the heads of the undead whenever they struggled up on shore of the island. His favorite weapon: a heavy sledgehammer with a taped handle that he called “Mincy.”
During the heyday of the apocalypse, he was a man you wanted on your side. Once the wall was built, not so much. His manly-man behavior became boorish, while at the same time, his jokes increased in both volume and vulgarity. Deanna found his company to be tedious, since he seemed to live to tell stories from the early days of apocalypse.
As far as she knew, the only reason Veronica had kept stringing him along was that he could still hunt better than any man on the island. Sure, sometimes he brought back an occasional harbor seal with big sad eyes, but he always gave a cut to Veronica.
“Well, if it ain’t Governor Dee.” He stepped into the foyer and was, thankfully, dressed. Despite his growing belly, he was inordinately proud of his naked flesh. “Or is it Governor Double-D? Ha-ha! Hey, I’m just kidding, you know that. You looked surprised to see me is all. Yeah, well I might be taking my grade-A loins off the market. And yes, I sell them by the pound. Ha-ha!” His booming laughter was the opposite of infectious. Veronica had her back to him and so he didn’t see her cringe.
There was an awkward silence and Paul rarely passed an opportunity to heighten the awkwardness to the next level. “So, what brings you out, Governor? Scraping for votes? Looking for a baby to kiss, or are you out pressing the flesh? If so, I could be your man. I may only have one vote, but it’s a big one.” He gave his hips a quick gyration.
Both the ugly movement and the awkward moment felt surreal to Deanna. “We’re on the verge of war, my daughter has been kidnapped, people are being murdered left and right—and you’re shaking your hips at me?”
The wide smile fell from his face. “Hey, it was just a joke.”
Ever the politician, Deanna forced the glare into a neutral look, adding the smallest of smiles; the best she could manage. “I’m sorry, but I’m just not in the mood this morning. There’s too much going on and I need to talk to Veronica, alone if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, sure. No sweat. In fact, I got things to do myself, you know. And you got me outta cuddling. Ha-ha! What self-respecting man has time for cuddling? Am I right?” Deanna clung to the fake smile, which he took for full agreement. He went to Veronica and bent over her, his lips outstretched a good inch. She gave him her cheek. “Now you’re shy? Ha-ha!”
Her grin was as fake as Deanna’s as she pushed him out the door and locked it behind him. She put her back to it. “This is not what you think. Nothing happened. He slept in the guest bedroom, I swear. It’s just, you know, with everything going on, I didn’t want to be in this house all alone. He may be sort of a jerk, but he’s also reassuring in a way.”
“Like having a big slobbery dog?”
“One that doesn’t mind ripping off farts right in front of you.” Veronica sighed. “I couldn’t go through with anything after that. Which is good, I guess. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Was? The outfit and the curled hair suggested to Deanna that the thought was still there. “You could have stayed with me. I have a ton of rooms.” Veronica’s fake smile came back, telling Deanna all she needed to know. Veronica would rather shack up with a moron like Paul than risk getting her throat slit by hanging out at the Governor’s mansion—and she didn’t even know about Deanna’s midnight visitor.
Deanna glossed over the refused invitation. “I need your help.” At this, Veronica shrunk into the door; not a good sign. “I really need you to take over Norris’ spot on the council. It’s important. No, it’s critical.”
She shook her head. “Critical? How so? Wasn’t he the Chief of Housing and Infrastructure?
I don’t know anything about that sort of thing.”
“You would learn on the job. It’s not that hard. It’s the job I had, remember? And I’m no genius.” But she’d had access to a genius. Jillybean had made short work of any problem that had arisen and Deanna had taken all the credit. This was, after all the mark of a truly gifted politician. “Besides, I’m going to authorize security details for each of the council members. You’ll be perfectly safe, and it’ll keep you out of the fighting if we have to go to war.”
The blonde had started to shake her head; the word “war” stopped her. “You think that’ll really happen? War, I mean?”
The way Deanna saw it, she didn’t have any choice but to go to war. Their chance of actually winning was a long shot, she knew this perfectly well. However, a fight to a draw, or maybe even a threat of a fight, could get her daughter back and save the island at the same time. “I do. It’s almost a certainty. And we’re going to need every man, woman and child doing their part. So, your choices are to fight, or this. Also, the pay is much better than at the plant. So, what do you say?”
Veronica wanted to say that no job was worth the possibility of getting stabbed to death. Then again, she didn’t want to be a part of any sort of battle. She had fought in enough battles in the early days and now she wanted to be done with all that.
“Please, Veronica. For me.”
“Oh, you pain in the ass. I guess so. How tough could the job be if Norris could do it?”
Deanna hid her relief behind a new confident smile. “Good. The first thing you need to do is get Kay on board as well. I want her for Joslyn’s position as Councilman at Large.” It was a catch-all position that required supervision and auditing skills, neither of which Kay Gallagher possessed to any degree. Kay had once been a sex slave, long before the Black Captain had come to Hoquiam. She had a crooked smile, when she smiled at all, and was slow on the uptake, from the many beatings she’d been subject to.
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 5