Behind this first group were dozens and dozens of others, forming a faceless, judging mob. They were Hill People, Santas, Guardians and Islanders. Above all, they were her people and they were counting on her to save them, to come up with some fantastic plan that could be pulled off at the last minute with little in the way of men or ships.
She was just about to tell Wojdan that she couldn’t come up with anything under these conditions when suddenly someone in the crowd turned and spat. It was Deaf Mick. Was he still a Corsair at heart? Was he a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Was he a friend?
Can I use him? she wondered. Can I send him in among his old friends and use him as a spy of her own?
He spat again, louder this time, and it was as if a switch was thrown inside of her. The answer was no. He couldn’t be trusted. He might have been in among her people, and he might have thrown away his usual black attire and made nice with everyone, but he wasn’t one them. On the outside, he was a friend, but on the inside, he was rotten to the core.
“What I need is the opposite,” she whispered, as the beginning of a plan began to form.
Chapter 30
San Francisco, California
It was two in the morning, and men were dying left and right. So far, eight knights had been pulled apart as easily as someone pulling the wings off a chicken that had been slow-roasting all day long. The men died with their rifles still strapped to their backs.
They also died soundlessly. The lives of a hundred men and perhaps the fate of everyone in the bay area depended on complete surprise.
The dead were stripped and left among the giant corpses of the zombies. So far on the slow trip through the crowded and mostly destroyed streets of San Francisco, the company had encountered nearly two dozen of the beasts. Some had been towering giants that had torn their way through the knights despite their hastily assembled phalanxes.
One great creature had taken a hundred spear wounds before it finally fell. In places the broken streets ran with blood, and still the company plodded forward, pushing their immense burden on and on.
They were not exactly happy and it wasn’t because of their fallen comrades. This was war and deaths were expected. Not only that, none of the fallen had disgraced themselves. Theirs constituted “good deaths.” They weren’t even unhappy at suddenly being subjects of the new queen. If she was good enough for the bishop, then she was good enough for them—and it didn’t hurt that she was reputed to be even more beautiful than the last queen.
No, what chapped their hides was who had been put in charge of the mission. It wasn’t the man who had made the dangerous crossing of the bay not once, but twice. Troy Holt had been considered too injured to lead a fight that was certainly going to be desperate.
And neither was Knights Lieutenant Chuck Hoerig given the opportunity, as was due his rank and experience. No, it was the traitor who led them.
Mike Gunter had fulfilled his promise hours earlier. When he and Rebecca Haigh had stumbled into their perimeter at Half Moon Bay, he had completely overstepped his boundaries and immediately demanded that the stranded fleet try to make it past the bridge so they could join forces with the rest of the Guardians in the bay.
As much as Knights Lieutenant Hoerig wanted to, he was bound by orders not to make the attempt.
“I’m going to give you one chance,” Mike had warned him. Hoerig had laughed him off. So, while Rebecca was getting her dislocated arm set, Mike went to the highest hill overlooking the harbor and set an old cottonwood on fire. It had burned like a beacon, and it wasn’t long before a Corsair scout ship had slipped up the bay and saw the white Guardian ships, and shot away again.
Mike was arrested on the spot, but in his mind he had done the right thing. Already a good portion of the Corsair fleet was converging on the bay. There were twenty black-sailed ships bottling up the fifteen white Guardian ships and the midnight black Harbinger. It was twenty ships fewer for Jenn to have to worry about.
“It won’t be for long,” Lieutenant Hoerig griped. “Unless they forgot to bring their torpedoes, we’re sitting ducks as soon as the surf calms down.”
“Just put out nets,” Mike shot back. “Their torps ride on top of the water.” As easy as that sounded, the Guardians had come to fight, not to fish, and their nets were back in Highton with a great deal of other gear. Having been around Jillybean for so long, simple solutions just seemed to jump to Mike’s mind. “Then set out logs. Anchor them about fifty yards out and make a series of walls out of them. Three should keep you safe.”
That they followed his suggestions didn’t absolve him and he was guarded for the next few hours until Troy Holt showed up, reeling with exhaustion. He had been rowed across to the east side of San Francisco safely enough, but once on land he had to dodge zombies for seven miles until every breath had been like sucking in razors. “Mike will lead the attack,” Troy had told the Guardians. “It was Commander Walker who made the decision.”
“I don’t need to lead,” Mike said, when he heard the Queen’s idea. What she had proposed was insanely dangerous and the casualty rate could very well hit a hundred percent if anything went wrong. But that wasn’t the reason he wanted Troy to take charge. “I’ll go and I’ll fight, but I don’t have to lead. These are your men, not mine.”
“It was the Queen’s idea,” Troy said, leaning in close. “You’re the only one of us who knows these streets, and the ins and outs of the bay. It makes sense.” He hardly knew the slim young man with the golden hair and the light, boyish whiskers. They had been together on the Queen’s Revenge for just over an hour. Troy knew his reputation better than he did the man, and some of his sailing feats were the stuff that legends were made out of.
“Her idea? How did she know I even lived? We both knew that there wasn’t any real chance anyone would make it off the bridge.”
That was the question when it came to the Queen. She was just a kid, even younger than Mike, and yet she had known he was alive and had stated it with such conviction that Troy had honestly believed it as well. Troy could only shrug as he answered Mike. “She just did.”
“I hate to burst everyone’s bubble,” Lieutenant Hoerig said. “Because of this guy, no one’s going anywhere. He called half their fleet down on us and now we’re trapped.” Troy and Mike shared a look and then both pointed at a rusted old boat trailer that was just down the beach.
That had been a few hours before, and although they were only going two miles down the coast, it had been a dreadful two hours. Ever since the battle on the bridge, the zombies were stirred up and the streets were flooded with them. The fastest of the Guardians led many of them away, but not all and those men who weren’t actively pushing the weighted-down trailer along were busy fighting the beasts.
Mike’s biggest fear was that there would be too few of them left once they put out to sea. The plan Jenn had cooked up was to pit the Harbinger against the dozen ships that had first cut through the chains and ropes beneath the bridge. When the anchors started to fall, the ships had fled south a mile and had taken refuge in the burned-out remains of a marina at the very northern tip of San Francisco.
Although it would be twelve ships against one, Jenn guessed that they were sparsely manned. Maybe only four or five crew members per ship. The rest of the room would have been taken up by supplies as well as the soldiers who had disembarked earlier.
The Harbinger could hold exactly eighty-seven men and that was with her lower deck packed like it was a tin of sardines.
They had started with a hundred men and they still had a quarter of a mile to literally grind out. The trailer’s rubber wheels had been flat to begin with, and as they had progressed, the rubber had peeled away until now the boat rolled along on bent rims.
“It’s not far,” Mike whispered to the men. Along with eight others, he had a rope over one shoulder and was leaning into it, pulling the trailer from the front, while ten more were pushing from the stern. Around them were Guardians, their long, bright spea
rs pointed outward. They were tall and slim, and bright-eyed. They held themselves fearlessly and although many of them sniffed at Mike personally, they never complained about his leadership.
Another zombie came crashing out from a house that had been made lopsided by the great earthquake that had hit years before. Like so many, it was bigger than the doorway from which it emerged and smashed its head through the top of the frame. It charged without noticing that it had scalped itself and was bleeding in great torrents.
Without a word of command, seven men lowered their spears and attacked from the front, while two more came at it from the sides. In a blind rage, the beast threw itself on those seven spears. It was heedless of the gaping wounds they caused. All that mattered to it was that the spears were between it and its dinner. With a swipe of an arm the size of a tree trunk, three of the spears were bent in half.
Just as it went to swipe at the others, a long blade erupted from the side of its neck. Tommy Conrad had always been a touch more nimble than the average Guardian. It was this quickness that had allowed him to survive as long as he had.
He had darted in to attack from the side, got in a near killing stroke and now began to pull back, however, his spear tip had ground along the edge of the zombie’s vertebra and for a split second had gotten stuck. It was just long enough for the creature to smash down on the spear with one tremendous blow. Tommy’s spear was bent in half and before he knew it, he was yanked close. Far too close. He was close enough to see the maggots squirming in an old festering wound across the thing’s naked chest.
Dropping the spear, he danced back just a hair too slow and the claws of the creature raked downward, practically pulling his face off. From his hairline to his jawline were five nasty gouges. One cut his nose in two and the other nearly ripped his lower lip clean off. It swung like a bloody worm from the ruin of his face.
“Tommy!” one of the soldiers cried, and jabbed at the zombie’s eyes, puncturing one. Another soldier threw himself between Tommy and the beast. His spear had been bent seconds before and was awkward in his hands. On the other hand, it was short enough for him to get up under the creature and slam it through the bottom of its chin, up through the soft palate, and into its black brain. The creature fell on him when it died.
Men rushed to help.
Two more attacks in quick succession gave them four more casualties with horrible wounds. “At least we’ll have more room in the boat,” Mike told himself.
In this he was wrong. The Guardians were different compared to so many others. Tommy Conrad’s wounds did not stop him from carrying on with his mission. One of his friends wrapped his face like he was a mummy from an old-time movie and before the Harbinger had progressed another three blocks, he was back with the group. The same was true with the others. They all came back.
When they finally got the Harbinger to a little known boat ramp, Tommy came up to Mike. His bandages were soaked through and sticking to his face. Only his dark eyes were visible. As he could only grunt, he used a series of signs to ask if he could lead the attack.
Mike, who felt extra young and small around the Guardians, had planned on being the first to fight. He put his ego aside. “Yes, of course. Stay on deck with me. The same is true with any of the wounded.”
Including Tommy Conrad, there were seven who sat along the railing at the bow. Altogether, eighty-nine men were stuffed into the fifty-foot boat, leaving only four of the older men to push her out into the surf where she bucked and rocked, sluggishly picking up speed.
She was so heavy that even the smallest waves broke over her sides and Mike was forced to shut the hold tight. He couldn’t imagine the claustrophobic conditions down in the dark hold.
“We’ll make the passage as quick as we can,” he told Ren Finnemore, the only female on board. Supposedly, the pale red-head was the best mariner among the Guardians, which was saying something.
Ren turned out to be an excellent sailor and a perfect second-in-command. She jumped at his every order without once questioning him. Her sail angles were excellent and she could steer nearer to the wind than anyone he had ever met. It helped that the sagging Harbinger didn’t need even an ounce of counter-weight. The one thing Ren wasn’t, was a soldier.
“Oh, God please help us,” she whispered in prayer as Mike set a course between the main fleet of the Corsairs and the twenty ships bottling up the Guardians in Half Moon Bay.
“It’ll be alright,” he assured her. At least for now. The Corsair ships were mere shadows, each a mile off on either side. It was a long way on a dark night especially when few, if anyone, would be looking for a Corsair ship streaming in from the southwest. Mike was gambling that the blockading ships would have their eyes focused on the bay, while he guessed that the main fleet wouldn’t be looking for anyone at all.
The men on watch at this late hour would be fighting sleep and would be more worried about accidentally drifting into another ship.
What had Mike’s guts twisting were the men high up on the bridge. If they caught wind that something was out of kilter with the Harbinger, all eighty-nine people on board would be sitting ducks.
When the ship was three hundred yards from the looming bridge, Ren asked, “Do you want me to drop the jib?” They were currently plowing through the water at an unimpressive five knots, her red hair barely lifting in the breeze. It was a snail-like pace for the open sea, but would seem dangerously fast while trying to cut through a forty-yard gap with the waves trying to heave the ship toward a huge cement bastion on one side, and the broken remains of a boat slung over a buoy on the other. A stray gust could doom them.
“Not yet. Get the lantern ready.” At the mention of the light, the mood on board soured. Surprise was their one hope and Mike’s idea of announcing themselves seemed like complete folly. A very dangerous folly. Without a light, they figured that they could slip on by completely unnoticed, or at worse, be hailed just as they were passing beneath the great structure—too late for the Corsairs to really do anything.
“And if they have radios?” Mike countered. “You know that if those ships are warned that something isn’t right, we’re screwed six ways from Sunday. To win we’re going to have to take some chances. I think this is our best one.”
The lantern was lit down in the companionway and at eighty yards, Ren began to blink the light in a random manner. At fifty yards, she asked about the jib again, the fear loud in her voice. “Let go the jib,” Mike called to one of the Guardians near the front.
Their speed dropped and the boat took on a bucking motion that was probably hell on the men packed below deck. Hell or not, the Guardians remained utterly silent as eighty-eight men and one woman held their breaths. The bridge was practically right over head when someone called down in something like a shouted whisper.
“Where do you guys think you’re going?”
Ren froze with the lantern lighting up the freckles that dotted her pale face. Mike quickly stepped over to her and turned the light away. He cleared his throat and called out in a perfectly realistic Corsair manner, “Mind your business.”
“This is my business, dink-wad. No one’s supposed to come through till morning. You didn’t get the memo?”
Mike didn’t know what a memo was. “I got orders is what I got. Secret orders that aren’t supposed to be spat out over the radio. Could be its people listening in that’s got the boss-man nervous.” By then they were passing under and beyond the bridge. That didn’t mean they were out of danger. Bullets could travel a long way.
“Jib up,” Mike ordered. “You, secure that boom vang. And you over there, you see the leech beginning to twist, don’t you?” He was trying to wring every ounce of speed out of her. Was the Corsair radioing the fleet? If so, how long would it take to get someone high enough up the chain of command to sound the alarm? Five minutes? Ten? If it was anything less than seven, they would be in trouble.
Through his binoculars, he could see the marina and a strange dark clump next to i
t. A minute passed, and then a second one, and still everything was quiet. He called for the hatch to be opened and by then he saw that the Corsairs ships were tied up alongside the dock in two neat rows. All but two of the ships, that is. For some reason, two of the ships were anchored thirty yards from the dock.
Once the fighting began, the only way to get to them would be to swim, something he wasn’t going to allow his men to do. With their armor and weapons, it would take ten minutes to swim that far and they’d be shredded to pieces by then.
He crouched on the stairs and whispered the positions of the ships to the men. “The first ones up will follow me down the dock. I’m going to be heading for the very last boat in line. The rest of you fill in as you go. No more than five men per boat and remember to count off. I don’t want ten of you attacking one boat while leaving another free to rip into us. We’re going to be lined up on a dock and very vulnerable, so if you can get onto one of the boats, do it. Also, the last ten men up will need to engage the two outlying ships.”
“Keep them pinned down,” Lieutenant Hoerig added. “And whatever you do, don’t let them escape. It’s probably better to sink a boat than let it rejoin their fleet. Remember men, this is our chance to even the odds. Every boat we take out or capture is one less our friends will have to face later.”
Mike thought that had a dark ring to it, as if Hoerig didn’t think he would make it through the fight. “One less boat we will have to face later,” he corrected.
“Yeah,” Hoerig answered with little enthusiasm, tugging at the collar of his armor. He was nervous, which was expected. Mike was well past nervous, and was lucky to have the ship to sail. It took his mind off the immediate prospect of dying, which seemed more and more likely with every passing minute.
Six minutes after they cleared the bridge, someone came out on deck of one of the separated boats. Mike saw the person as nothing more than a black human form, holding what looked like a pair of binoculars. The man probably saw the same thing in Mike.
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 36