Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained

by Meredith, Peter

  It was here that they ran into trouble since they were the only ones leaving the inlet.

  “Go ahead of us,” Neil yelled. “We’ll cover you.”

  She wanted to argue and tell them about the long ragged lacerations that went down her calf. Everyone knew that when a person was scratched by a zombie, especially as badly as she was, they were going to get the zombie disease. It made sense that if she was going to die anyway, that she should be the one covering them. Fear tended to make a mockery out of sense and she said nothing as the Corsairs turned and came on.

  More ships suddenly appeared from the south and some came squeaking out of the little nooks and crannies that dotted the Seattle coastline. It became a race for the Bainbridge Harbor with Troy Holt shouting across to Emily how to get the most out of her ship.

  Unfortunately, the Dead Fish was swimming heavy with sea water that had never been pumped out. The Corsairs were catching up.

  Gunner glanced back. He grunted. He then looked forward and grunted again. “What does this entire thing look like to you?” She was too afraid for word games and shrugged without giving the questions a single thought. “It looks like an attack.” He pointed with his stump at the walls surrounding the harbor. They were bristling with guns.

  “And the gate…it’s still closed,” she whispered in breathless shock. “Don’t they know it’s me?” She stood up and, leaving the wheel to a man who couldn’t scratch the back of his head, she ran to the bow and began waving her arms. Someone on the wall took a ranging shot that sent up a little plip of water thirty yards in front of her.

  Another splashed off to the left, while a third blazed past them from behind. “What do we do?” she cried.

  “Get over the side,” Gunner answered, “and get as far from the boat as possible. Go!”

  She looked over the side and even took a step toward the rail. “What about you?”

  “Forget me!” he growled.

  Another shot. This one struck the boat with a Thwak! It had struck the wheel, knocking off one of the handles. It spun in the air and bounced off her unflinching father’s shoulder. Two shots from behind poked holes in the main, just above the boom. Instead of leaping overboard, she jumped to Gunner and draped her soaking wet body over his.

  He was too weak to thrust her off of him. “Please, go,” he said.

  “No! If you die, then I die.” It was an absurd thing to say since they were both going to die one way or another, either by bullet, blood loss, or infection. The whole idea made her feel completely absurd; irrationally she ran to the bow and tore off her jacket. It felt like it weighed forty pounds as she tried to wave it over her head.

  Two hundred yards away, a triumphant Deanna Grey was ready to give the order to fire. It was a struggle for her not to grin like a child; the slaughter of hundreds of men, even enemies, was not something a proper leader should revel in. It would be unseemly.

  “They’re in range!” Wayne French yelled, his voice high with excitement. “Get ready to fire.” Everyone on the wall leaned forward, aiming down the length of their guns.

  “Not yet,” Deanna said, quietly contradicting him. “The first two boats are close enough. I want to get them all.” A strange, hungry bloodlust had risen in her and even though she might not have been grinning, her eyes were wide and scary. After everything she had gone through here was her chance to strike back and she wanted to hurt them so badly that she felt more than a little insane.

  Wayne didn’t notice. He was hyper with adrenaline. Excitement raced through him so that his hands shook and his heart pounded. He felt wild and invincible. The Corsairs had already shot a few times, their bullets coming nowhere near the wall. “Hold on!” he yelled. “Just a little longer. Let them get in close. Hold on. Get ready. A little closer.” He sucked in a long breath and was forced to hold it as some of the black ships suddenly turned south. Disappointed about the possibility of being robbed of an easy victory, he shot a look at Deanna, who was gripping the edge of the wall with her painted nails as if they were talons.

  “Destroy the closer ones,” she ordered, coldly. “They need to be taught a lesson. They can’t just come into our territory like this. They can’t just threaten us and expect us to cower. Kill as many as you can.”

  “Ready!” Wayne cried out. He paused before he uselessly yelled, “Aim.” They were already aiming. Two hundred guns of every sort were pointed at the lead boats. A quarter of them were long rifles with scopes.

  “That’s a girl,” one man declared. He could see Emily clear as day through his Leupold scope. It didn’t look like Emily, however. Her long blonde hair was dark and wet, plastered to her head, and her black clothes were far too large on her and made her look heavier than she was.

  Another man saw the same thing and hesitated, as did another and another. Deanna heard the word girl and felt her insides turn to water. “Don’t shoot! Nobody shoot! Gimme those binoculars.” There was her daughter, waving a flap of black cloth…no it was a coat. And she was in one piece, standing tall, so tall that Deanna had to wonder if she’d grown a foot in the last few weeks.

  There was a dead man on the boat with her, he looked dead, at least right up until he tried pushing himself up. It was then she saw the horror of his face.

  “I think there’s a zombie on the boat with her,” the man with the scope said. “I could shoot him, maybe.”

  “No. Not yet. You might hit Emily, and either way, it looks like it’s dying.” Deanna didn’t care about the hideous creature; to her it was a nonentity. She had her daughter back! With every passing second, Emily came closer and closer. It didn’t matter what sort of things were with her. There was another on the second boat and she didn’t even recognize Neil Martin until she saw the Crocs. Her stomach turned at the same time that her heart sank for her old friend.

  After everything the people of Bainbridge had gone through, she didn’t know how they were going to react to him. She forced her confident politician’s smile back on her face. “Open the harbor gate! Wayne, get the harbor gate open, now.”

  There was a great deal of reluctance around obeying the order. On the Dead Fish, there was an even greater reluctance on the part of Gunner in going anywhere near the gate.

  “Maybe you should go over to the Harbinger,” he suggested. “You know I’m done for. I could lead the Corsairs away.”

  There wasn’t much danger from the Corsairs at the moment. They had sailed south for a few miles and were now clumped together, as if the ships themselves were talking to each other. Emily saw right through her father’s lie and knew the reason for it. He had braved bullets, bombs, fire and zombies, and yet the idea of having Deanna see his real face left him a quivering mess.

  Emily patted him on his good arm. “They’d catch you easily, and we’d be out a perfectly good boat. Besides, you haven’t died yet. I can do some stuff, you know. I can do IVs and I bet we can get some blood donors. When everyone finds out about you and what you did for me, they’ll…”

  “No!” he snapped, savagely. “No one can know about me. Don’t even call me Gunner. Just call me…” As he hunted for a suitable name, she wanted to ask, Can I call you Dad? She didn’t, however. Especially now that her leg was infected, she thought she understood the need for secrets.

  He finally blurted out the name Joe. He also asked if she could make him a new mask. Emily understood that, too. Pretty soon she would be even uglier, inside as well as out. “Sure, no problem,” she told him and left the boat to drift in the general direction of the harbor. A mask was easy to make. A clean shirt a few cuts with some scissors and she had a crude one.

  Dressing him was far more difficult and not just because of his hump. He had massive shoulders and tree trunks for legs. She did her best, though he was forced to wear a sheet as though it were a cape since no shirt on board had a chance of fitting him.

  Then she was busy working the boat, listening to Troy as he talked her through the tricky steps to get the Dead Fish through the
gate with a light wind on her port bow. The boat began to gripe and fight her, and had it not been for ropes thrown to her from the dock, she would have run the boat up onto some rocks and maybe gutted her.

  The ropes pulled her in and the Dead Fish kissed the side of the dock as neat as you please. Emily couldn’t help herself and she abandoned both the boat and Gunner. Springing up on the dock she rushed into her mother’s arms and began to cry. The tears poured out of her in great hot torrents and she went on until she heard whispering picking up around her.

  She heard Neil’s name spoken in fear and disgust. The Harbinger was just being brought to the dock and there was Neil, smiling at Deanna—the unappealing look wasn’t earning him any new friends and some called out, “Don’t let him on the island!”

  Sudden fierce anger flared up in the girl. “Who said that?” she demanded. “You guys don’t know anything about what’s going on out there. You’ve been here hiding while Neil was fighting the Corsairs to rescue me. And none of you better say a word about Joe.” She pointed at her father, who was fighting for breath as he sat as straight as he could, his dark eyes flicking toward Deanna every other second.

  Neil appeared confused over the name though no one noticed. With him looks of confusion, constipation and blood craving were all essentially the same until one became adept at reading between the scars.

  “Joe saved me a hundred times and if it wasn’t for him, the Corsairs would’ve been here days before and in far greater numbers. These people are heroes. You should be thanking them.”

  “What happened to you out there?” Veronica asked. As glad as she was that Emily was back, she had a case of the willies seeing the bullet holes in the two boats, and the bloody decks and the bloody men and the one bloody woman who had been lifted from the hold. Even Emily looked as if she had been put through the wringer.

  Emily answered speaking loudly and quickly, leaving off any point she felt wasn’t completely necessary, her scratches being one of those little tidbits. The crowd hung on every word, especially any battle descriptions. They marveled at Jillybean being a queen, though this wasn’t the first they had heard of it, and they were amazed at Emily’s description of her invincible armada and horrified that the tables were turned on her.

  “Then we’re doomed,” Wayne French said. “Jillybean’s a slave. Her army consists of this one person.” He indicated Gunner who should have fainted dead away long before, and was holding on only because he didn’t want to look weak in front of the woman he loved. “And our only allies are hundreds of miles away and are even less of a threat than we are.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Andrea Clary cried out. “Our so-called governor is a spy.”

  Deanna rolled her eyes. “Not this again. Emily was kidnapped! We have witnesses who were there. One of whom is a Guardian, and they don’t lie, ever. The letter was a fake.”

  “Then how do you explain this?” She held a small black device in her hand. “It’s a detonator that we found in your house.” The crowd ooohed. “It was hidden among some tools in your garage.”

  “Are you sure it’s not a garage door opener?”

  Andrea’s eyes glittered. “Do garage door openers have two switches, one that’s marked ‘Arm’ and the other that says ‘Detonate?’”

  “I’ve had about enough of this,” Deanna snarled. “I have three wounded people to take care of and there are Corsairs gathering on the Sound. Bring me that.” She snapped her fingers. Warily, Andrea brought the detonator to her and handed it over. Without hesitation, Deanna flicked the ‘Arm’ switch upward. This quieted the crowd in an instant. “Don’t worry,” Deanna told them. “It’s a fake.” Doing her best not to show concern, she thumbed the detonate switch.

  Chapter 19

  Hoquiam, The Lair of the Corsairs

  The woman was laid out on the altar, looking as though she was about to be tortured or sacrificed—or both. Jillybean had no qualms at all about using the altar as an operating table; it was no longer holy, and hadn’t been for some time.

  “Okay, let’s see that tooth.” She noted that the swelling in the gums was still present. It had gone down as much as it ever would with just salt rinses as a relief. Jillybean didn’t let her disappointment show. She hated causing anyone pain and with Kerry’s gum so inflamed, it would make the extraction of her rotten tooth far more painful than normal, and they were never pleasant to begin with.

  “I’ve seen worse,” she told Kerry. Of course, she’d had access to proper tools and medicine when she had. “There’s still a bit of swelling, so we’re going to take this in two steps. First, we’ll need to expose the root, which will entail a minor incision. It will hurt, I’m sorry to say.”

  “I just want it out,” Kerry said, gazing up at Jillybean with vacant glassy eyes. Her head felt like it was about to crack open. A cut would be nothing. “It’s killing me.”

  Jillybean gave her an understanding pat on the arm, then took off her gold and bone crown, and then set aside her flesh robe. Except for her gold collar, she was now completely naked, just like all the rest of the slaves. “Open wide, now. Perfect. Close your eyes and try not to flinch.” She used a razor blade and her hands were steady. The cut was quick and perfect. Perfect or not, Kerry groaned as pus and blood poured out.

  “The cloth, Leah.” The little girl had giant unblinking eyes as she looked at the mess in the slave’s mouth. Jillybean had to reach over and snatch the previously boiled cloth out of her stiff hands. She used it to staunch the bleeding, dabbing it until she could see the top of the root.

  “Okay. I’m going to pry it out. Once again, hold still.” The only other tool she had to work with was a sterilized screwdriver that she’d kept hidden away; nobody liked to see the tools used in this sort of rudimentary and barbaric surgery. Jillybean wedged a bit of cloth against Kerry’s other molar to act as a fulcrum. She then jabbed the screwdriver quickly down below the gum-line to where the root divided. Prying firmly upward caused the tooth to slide right out. “Leah? Don’t look in her mouth. You’ll faint if you do. I can see it in your eyes. Good. The small cloth, please.”

  This too had been sterilized. Jillybean folded it twice, before she poked it down into the open socket. “Alright, Kerry. We’re all done. Keep that in place until the bleeding stops, then more salt rinses every couple of hours for the next two days.”

  Kerry wore a stunned expression as she moved her jaw around. The terrible ache was gone. “Thanks. It-it feels better already.” She sat up and swung her feet around. When she hopped down from the altar, she seemed to collapse; however, she had actually sunk to her knees. Jillybean went to help her up and as she did, Kerry grabbed her hand and kissed each knuckle. “Thank you, your Highness. Thank you. That was…nice of you. No one ever does nice things here.”

  “No one? Not even the other slaves?” Kerry shook her head with her eyes averted—she hadn’t been nice either, Jillybean guessed. “Well, that’s something I’ll change if I can. Now get up. You don’t want to make the Captain jealous.” The Black Captain had just walked into the church. His dark eyes were at squints. “You should go thank him as well. Make sure you kneel.”

  “But it’s him.” Kerry looked understandably terrified. No slave wanted to go anywhere near the Captain. He enjoyed hurting women and rarely passed up the chance when it was presented.

  Jillybean helped her to her feet. “Trust me. I can read people. The Captain is in charge. Everything must flow from him. Go on.”

  Kerry only did it because her Queen had asked her to. Shaking, she went to him and knelt at his feet and whispered, “Thank you, Master.” It came out somewhat garbled because of the wad of cloth in her mouth.

  If the Captain heard, he made no reaction. He walked past her, around the fire and the quivering slaves and to the raised dais. Behind him came a host of people: Eve was at his shoulder, smiling in the hope that Jillybean would be beaten. Next to her was Augustus, King of the Azael; she had blown him up with a hand grenade.
And there was his greatest warrior, Brad Crane with a Bowie knife buried up to its hilt in his back. The bloody prints on it were tiny, so very tiny. The fingerprints of a seven-year-old.

  And there was Earnest Smith, back from hell, and the River King a gaping hole in his face from where she had shot him, standing over him, her mind teetering back and forth between sanity and the great abyss. And there were more, hundreds more. The church couldn’t hold the number of people Jillybean had killed, and so they spilled out into the streets beyond the doors.

  She dropped her chin.

  “What is this?” the Captain asked, giving the bloody razor a bland look that suggested indifference. It was a lie. Behind him the ghosts echoed the question, whispering it so that the church sounded as though it were filled with snakes. “Were you given permission to perform dentistry?”

  “It was implied,” Jillybean answered, without looking up. “You have made me Queen of the Slaves. A queen’s job is to protect her people and to…”

  The Captain interrupted. “That’s where you’re getting things mixed up. They’re not people. They are property.”

  She bowed from the shoulders up, still not daring to look past his feet. Seeing her many victims like this, completely out of the blue, had unnerved her.

  Eve sneered. They aren’t victims, Jillybean. They are all the pathetic little worms that got in our way. Look at them. Look! Against her will, Jillybean’s head came up and she saw the mass of people, both men and women. Some were indistinct; these were people she had killed in passing; guards on some bridge she might have blown up, or passengers in a truck she sent tumbling end over end for a quarter of a mile. Some were perfectly recognizable; David Wolf, the bounty hunter who had come for her and who had killed Sarah Rivers. He was missing an eye because Jillybean had used a .38 to pop it out for him.