Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained

by Meredith, Peter

  She switched to side-stroke and plowed on, dragging herself forward, foot by foot. When she came to one of the wallowing zombies that grew to insane proportions in the Sound, she ducked under the water and swam beneath its long, long arms.

  All her life she had been afraid of the “slimers,” as the kids of Bainbridge called the water-logged zombies that were scattered throughout the Sound. They didn’t frighten her just then. Too much had happened to her for her to be afraid of something so easily avoided—although they floated, zombies couldn’t swim and as long as they didn’t suddenly grab her from beneath and suck her into the depths, she had nothing to fear. She gambled that none were floating in the current ten-feet down.

  Eventually, she neared the western end of the island and, as it was another two miles around to the harbor entrance, she decided to come in under the wall through Jillybean’s secret passageway. Without pausing to catch her breath she ran for home. By then she was almost done, and her run was a lurching, meandering jog along dark, empty streets. She was nearly there when she caught sight of Neil running for the old Chinese restaurant where the council met. After the long swim and the mile run in her sopping wet clothes, she was gasping and far too winded to call out.

  The best she could do was to follow doggedly after him and hope he was heading to see her mom.

  Why wasn’t he with her in the first place? Had something terrible happened? Had the spy attacked again? And who the hell was it? That was the biggest question. Emily thought that Kay Gallagher was too stupid, Rosanna Landeros was too old and Andrea Clary, at five-foot even, was too small; she could never have killed big Norris Barnes.

  Emily didn’t want to think such a horrible thought, but she guessed it was Veronica Hennesy. She was so convinced that it was her that even as she slipped into the restaurant with the sound of the gunshots ringing in the air, and saw Deberha Perkins holding the gun, she couldn’t believe it.

  Deberha couldn’t be a spy, she was too boring. She was a dumpy nothing of a woman who had never showed any sort of desire beyond simply existing.

  Which makes her the perfect spy, Emily thought just as she jabbed her pistol into the side of Deberha’s neck and dug it into the sheriff’s soft flesh. Everything except the feel of the trigger against the pad of her finger fell away just then: her exhaustion simply vanished, her trembling muscles became still, her fear evaporated, replaced by a scarcely discernible current of fury.

  Even the cold that had been slowly killing her seemed to poof out of existence. She was almost entirely numb. Only her gun hand really felt anything. That one hand was strangely hot and frightfully eager. It held the power of life and death, and oh, so badly it wanted to unleash death on Deberha Perkins.

  The only thing holding her back was the idea that Deberha might jerk when her larynx was blasted out the side of her throat. If Deberha jerked, she could accidentally squeeze off a last shot and with the gun pointed at her mom…Emily couldn’t take the chance.

  But she could fake it. “Maybe you have some last words,” Emily said, nearly adding “sheriff,” but biting it back at the last second. The only title Deberha deserved was traitor.

  “We both know you won’t pull the trigger, Emily,” Deberha answered, pulling herself together. “I’ve known you your whole life. You’re too sweet to hurt anyone. And that’s a good thing. You pride yourself on your niceness, just like your mother. Everyone says you two are practically twins. So, come on. Put the gun down so we can talk. We can figure this out together.”

  The gun didn’t waiver an inch. “Yeah, I’m like my mom, but I’m also like my dad. And if you knew him, you’d know you are exactly one blink from death.”

  Deberha grunted, “Scary. You know that if you shoot then I will as well. It’ll be bye-bye mom and it’ll be your fault. That’s what people will say. Emily screwed up and killed her mom. Is that what you want? Because I don’t. So, like I said, put up the gun and we’ll figure this out.”

  Emily pulled the gun back just long enough for Deberha to think she had a chance, then Emily dug it into Deberha’s ear. Emily dug it in deep, saying, “No. You have exactly one chance to live and that is to drop your gun and hope I won’t kill an unarmed woman. I’m not playing games.”

  Deanna was amazed at her daughter. This wasn’t the same little girl in pigtails who could break her heart with a tear. Just then she was somewhat frighteningly, like her father had been. She exuded cold anger and it was clear that she wasn’t going to back down in the face of a threat. Deberha seemed to understand this as well.

  “Okay, hold on. Just relax, okay? I have information. Radio codes, names of other agents, the Captain’s plans, but I need a guarantee that I won’t be harmed.”

  “All that’s great,” Emily said, digging the barrel of the gun deeper, “but you’re still pointing a gun at my mom. That’s all I care about right this second.”

  Deberha breathed out a long, put-upon sigh, dropped the gun, and slowly lifted her hands. Emily grabbed Deberha’s collar and used the gun that was still digging into her reddening ear to shove her against the wall. Oddly, Emily hadn’t been scared before, now it felt like she had just grabbed an adder by the tail. “How’s Uncle Neil?”

  “Uncle…” Neil said, spitting up blood as he did, “is f-fine. Whoa. Is that a lot of blood? It seems like a lot of blood to me.” Every word brought up at least a mouthful. He looked down at himself in dismay. “This was my second best vest and now there are holes in it!”

  Deanna held him down as he tried to get up. “No. Just relax for a moment. I have to think.” Her mind was in a whirl and her body was jacked-up on adrenaline. Now was not the time to make a mistake. “First. Kick over that gun, Deberha. Now get on your knees and face the wall.” Once that was done, Emily stepped back and started to shake. The cold of her swim was finally hitting her. It felt like her bones had frozen. They ached like a bad tooth.

  As a mom, Deanna wanted to comfort her. As a governor, she didn’t have the time. She needed information right that second. “The radio codes, what are they?”

  A new sigh escaped, Deberha. “I don’t know them. I mean I don’t have them memorized. I have them back at my house. If we can come to some sort of public agreement in which I’m given safe passage off the island, I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

  Deanna didn’t have time for this either. “Put your hands flat on the wall,” she instructed. Deberha thought she was going to be frisked, instead Deanna shot her through the back of left hand. The bullet shattered the bird-like bones and blasted out through her palm. Deberha screamed and Emily stepped back in shock.

  Neil laughed up more blood. His chin was awash in red. “Nice one,” he said, chortling. “Are you going to shoot her every time she answers like that? If so, could you shoot off a foot or something. This is making me hungry.”

  Deanna didn’t think he was joking, and just then that was okay because Deberha was staring at him in horror. “Deanna, p-please don’t. I s-said I would t-tell you everything. ”

  “Then start talking,” Deanna answered, aiming the gun at Deberha’s left knee with every intention of pulling the trigger. “Who are these other agents?”

  Deberha couldn’t stop staring at the gun. “Mary P-Page and Rod McCade. They were mostly just on the hook. They weren’t doing anything more than dropping off intel reports on a monthly basis. They’re both with the army right now but they don’t have any way to make contact, so they’re basically harmless.”

  “And the Captain’s plans?” Deanna demanded.

  “Hey, look, the truth is I just said that I knew them so you wouldn’t shoot me. I really don’t know what he’s planning on doing. Honest to God. Okay? That’s the truth.”

  Deanna didn’t like the answer and was contemplating shooting her when, Neil asked, “What’s that thing they’re setting up across the water? The guys in the lighthouse said it looked like some sort of cannon.”

  “I swear I don’t know.” She raised wet red hands to
Deanna. “But I might be able to find out. And I might be able to help you guys. You can use me. I lied before. I really know the radio frequencies they use and I-I can feed them false information.”

  Emily was hugging herself and her grin was hard. “You already did. My da…I mean Gunner smoked out the trap. He set up a trap within a trap, and we gave your friends a real beating. We killed hundreds of them.” Although this was true, it was not a completely accurate description of the fight. Gunner had sensed the trap and had planned his trap within a trap so perfectly that the Corsairs should have been crushed.

  They even made the ridiculous error of advancing in two compact and amateurish lines that harkened back to the seventeenth century. It should have been a turkey shoot as half the Bainbridge army sat behind prepared defenses while the other half rushed up from behind and fell on their rear. The battle couldn’t be scripted any better. Unfortunately, his soldiers were not equal to his generalship.

  Most of the attacking portion of the army didn’t fire their weapon at all, making the hammer portion of the attack a feeble pinprick, and leaving the tactical anvil alone to take on the brunt of the Corsair onslaught. Even with a perfectly defensible hill and with painstakingly prepared fields of fire, many of the defenders panicked at the first shot. Those that remained were outnumbered seven to one and yet managed to inflict somewhere close to four-hundred casualties before Gunner allowed them to make a fighting withdrawal.

  When Gunner regrouped, he discovered that half of his army had disappeared. Those that had fought declared the battle a victory. Gunner had laughed in the terrible way of his and said, “One more victory like that and we’re done for.”

  Her mom didn’t need to know all of the details of the fight, but she did need to know that Deberha’s usefulness as a double agent was questionable. It was about all the time Emily had left anyway. Gunner needed her. Running an army, even a small one, was exhausting on every level and Gunner had been looking gray and used-up when she had left, and he didn’t have zombie blood like Neil to keep him going.

  As far as she could tell, the only thing still keeping him alive was the fact that he still loved her mom, and Emily feared that wouldn’t be enough.

  “I have to get back, Mom. Kill her if you have to, just don’t let her play you. And Neil, don’t you dare die. My Da…I mean Gunner will win the day and I’ll be back, maybe tomorrow. You can hold out until then, right?”

  “This is nothing,” he assured her. This was a monumental lie. It was like his lungs were filled with seaweed, making each breath something of a struggle. And his heart had developed an unsettling hitch, where it would sometimes stall completely one second and then rev-up the next. He had some sort of nerve or brain damage as well. Parts of his body were completely without feeling and might as well have been made of wood.

  That dead feeling came and went, striking him here and there, affecting him pretty much randomly everywhere except for his stomach. Seeing Deberha’s blood being wasted as it dribbled onto the floor was driving him to distraction. He was trying to decide the etiquette involved: was it bad manners to lick blood off the floor when no one else was eating? If he had been standing there with a doughnut in hand, no one would say a thing if he took a bite, and wasn’t this practically the same thing?

  His stomach let out an embarrassing growl and he had to force his eyes away from the wonderfully red puddle. “Yeah, I’m good,” he said, getting to his feet. “Don’t worry about me, I’m fit as a uh, one of those things. One of those little brown things. Huh? What’s the word? Tuba?”

  “Fiddle,” Deanna suggested.

  “That’s it. I’m fiddley-fit and ready to go. I should even go with you, Emily. I can fight, and me and Grey always made a good team. We were like the Captain and Tennille. Oh, wait, Tennille was a girl. Then I guess we were like Batman and Robin. But I never did like Robin so much. Yellow tights? Please. I’d never wear yellow tights, unless it was cold, I guess.”

  As he wondered where he would even get yellow tights at this time of the year and on such short notice, he was unaware that everyone was staring at him. Deberha stared in revulsion as he coughed up something large and chunky and began to chew on it, Emily in fear that he had just given away her dad’s secret, and Deanna in concern that her oldest friend was falling to pieces. Had he forgotten that his best friend had died a decade ago?

  Deanna was torn three ways: mother-friend-governor. The mother in her won out. Keeping the gun pointed at Deberha, she asked Emily, “You don’t really have to go, do you? Have you eaten? What about a change of clothes? You look cold. You should dry off and warm up before you do anything.”

  “I have to go, Mom.”

  “No. The only thing you have to do is listen to your mom. Your lips are practically blue and, my God your skin is freezing. Gunner will have to figure something else out. Now that we know who the spies are, he can trust someone else. It doesn’t have to be you.”

  Then who? Emily thought. Wayne French? Hardly. Big, dumb Paul Daniels? The old set of camouflage Paul had been wearing looked suspiciously clean, making Emily think that he hadn’t done much fighting during the hour-long battle. And could he trust meek Jonathan Dunnam with his perfectly parted hair and his sweaty upper lip? Or what about stern Rosanna Landeros with her bad back?

  “I’m sorry, but it has to be me,” Emily said. “Now’s not the time to falter or go weak in the knees.”

  Deanna feared she was right. The heroes of the past were all dead or broken, and what remained behind couldn’t compare. In its sad way, cowardice was a survival mechanism that worked better than courage.

  “You sounded like your father just then,” she told her daughter.

  In truth, Emily had been channeling Jillybean, but she thanked her mom for the compliment, nonetheless. “Are you going to be okay, mom? With her, I mean.”

  Deberha had sat back on her heels. She hung her head as if beaten down, a look that no one trusted. “I’m fine. If she tries anything, I’ll have Neil eat her.” He looked quite pleased at the idea and showed ghastly red teeth. The shudder that ran up Deberha’s back couldn’t be faked.

  Deanna wanted to say more. She wanted to wheedle and cajole her daughter into staying, and if that didn’t work, she was prepared to lay down some serious guilt—at the same time, she was immensely proud of her daughter. “Take one of the canoes at least. And change your clothes. Your shoes, too.”

  The pre-teen in Emily was very close to rolling her eyes. The child and daughter in her were stronger. She grabbed her mom in a hug, grinned when Deanna planted a warm kiss on her lips and then left with a final wave to Neil.

  Stepping out into the cold night air, the fatigue hit her like a ton of bricks, causing her shoulders to slump. They did so for only a second. Her father’s toughness was legendary and she had seen his amazing endurance firsthand. All of that was in her somewhere, she just had to find it. Taking a deep breath, she set off again, this time for home. It was close and she knew she’d need dry clothes if she wasn’t going to die from exposure. Her house was also close to the harbor.

  In twenty-three minutes, she was sitting in one of the island’s four canoes, dry and warm, thrusting out with her paddle.

  The second she was past the harbor gate, the dangers around her began to multiply. Great leviathans with long arms and unending appetites dotted the Sound; black ships could be seen like immense shadows sliding silently across the water going back and forth from Seattle; and of course there was the Corsair army.

  They had been given a sharp beating and had eventually retreated, but they hadn’t been defeated. There were still so many of them. The question was, where were they? Was she paddling right at them and didn’t know it? And what about the thing Neil had spoken about. Was it a rocket or a cannon, or maybe some sort of laser? Did it kill people or were they planning on battering down the walls with it?

  Did Gunner know about it?

  Because of where she was, she felt that she had an obligation
to scout out this mystery device. Slinking as low as she could, she gently paddled through the dark water, heading towards the mainland where dozens of fires were burning. Against the dark background they looked like stars. Most were flung outwards to attract the stray zombies left in the area, but one set of fires was arrayed in a tight ring and as she drew closer she saw that something odd had been erected in the center of it.

  It was a metal contraption of sorts with a long, narrow platform jutting from the front. There was a mob of people around it; she could hear their laughter from a hundred yards away. It was as close as she wanted to get. If she was seen she would be a sitting duck. As is she looked more or less like a floating log. After the platform was checked and rechecked, a long cylinder was brought out and placed on the platform.

  Emily knew a rocket when she saw one. Jillybean had shot off a dozen at least and from those experiences, Emily knew they didn’t always fly as straight as one wished. She began paddling out of the way and had only made it fifty yards when the rocket’s engine roared into life. The scream of the engine was as loud as a jet, and the great fiery tail behind it was like a small sun as it shot over Emily’s head.

  Its initial trajectory was angled upwards slightly and thus the rocket continued to climb as it zoomed over the wall, missing it by only a few feet and leaving scorched concrete behind. It detonated three seconds later in a great mushrooming fireball.

  “Oh, God, no,” Emily whispered. What had the rocket hit? A house? A school? The governor’s mansion? “I gotta go back,” she whispered and started to turn the canoe, only to stop halfway. “No. Mom can handle this. I have to warn Gun…I mean, I have to warn my dad.” He would know how to stop this. If he couldn’t then nobody could.

  Chapter 29