GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  At the same time, there was a great cracking sound as the dead began to tear down the plywood boards on the west side of the complex.

  Mike looked confused. “What are you talking about? Stu can barely limp around. Keep the rifle, Jenn. You’re more effective…”

  Stu tried to hand back the rifle. “We can get someone else. Or I can do it.”

  “Do what?” Mike demanded.

  Angrily, Jenn pushed the gun back, saying, “Someone has to be ready to put out the fire, and I can’t climb up there. Someone else has to clear out the last of the Corsairs and then button this place up. That’ll be Stu’s job, because frankly, we can’t trust anyone else to do it.”

  Mike glanced back and forth from Jenn to Stu. “And?”

  “And someone has to go outside the fence to distract the dead,” she said in a whisper. “Or they’ll get in the perimeter.”

  “I’ll go,” Mike said, standing up. “We’ll get someone else to go up onto the roof. One of the men.” He looked around, ignoring two of the Corsairs as they climbed up the wall and disappeared. Other than the few Corsairs left, there were no men in evidence.

  Stu stood, wagging his head, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. “Maybe I could get them away. I don’t have to go far. Just far enough…”

  Jenn punched his hurt leg and he crumpled. “No. This has to be done, now! The fire has to be put out, now! The complex has to be shut down, now! And one of us has to go out there. Three jobs for three of us.” She stood, staring up at Mike and swallowed hard. “Stu, look away.”

  He turned to the wall of the porch and punched a hole in the siding. Jenn ignored him. She brushed away one of Mike’s tears. “Maybe…maybe, I’ll make it,” she said.

  “Wait! I could…” She shut him up, kissing him for the third and final time. Midway through the kiss, his shoulders slumped as he realized their fates were set.

  He looked broken as she pulled away from him. His face was a mask of misery and his green eyes were tortured with the knowledge that she would never get away from so many of the dead.

  She left him, knowing that another kiss would only doom them all. She ran away, her vision blurred by tears. Savagely, she ripped them away with the back of her hand. Tears were wasted now. They all had their jobs, and hers was the most important.

  This was what she told herself as she ran up to her apartment, stopping only long enough to grab her broom and wrap it loosely in a pair of sheets. Then she sped to the gate and looked back at building four, where she saw Mike’s silhouette as he smothered the fire. At the same time, the last of the gunshots rang out in the complex and people began to hush each other into silence.

  The only sound were the dead tearing the wall and the running feet of the Corsairs.

  It was time for her to go. After dousing the sheets with oil, and lighting them, she ran through the gate, a scream of anger and fear erupting out of her. The dead turned to Jenn Lockhart and converged on her by the hundreds.

  She was a beacon. Every eye, dead or alive fixated on her and her fear was visible for all to see as she ran zigzagging all over the hilltop. The dead seemed to appear before her out of nowhere. She dodged back and forth, panic gripping her just as surely as she gripped the Glock. It was her insurance policy against the inevitable. It was only a matter of time before she would need to use it on herself; there were just too many of them and they were fast and strong and their arms seemed to stretch farther and farther so that their claws were always inches away.

  Almost mindlessly, she ran from one, only to blunder into the next, and more and more her thoughts turned to the gun. Jillybean would have been disappointed: Jenn was thinking only one step ahead and that step was suicide.

  What would a second step ahead even be? she wondered.

  A gunshot from down the hill gave her an idea. If she was going to die, she could at least take a few Corsairs with her. Holding the burning sheet above her head, she ran down the hill, dodging the dead, tripping over branches and crashing through bushes.

  The hill was covered in black shadows and the flames only made them deeper. She fell and fell again, sometimes rolling uncontrollably, sometimes going down and popping up almost without losing her stride. She couldn’t spare a second even to look back. There was an avalanche of giant grey bodies pouring down the hill after her. Not only could she hear them crushing everything in their way, she could feel the hill itself tremble.

  Cut and bruised and muddy, she raced down onto the streets just a little way from the harbor. Up until that moment she had been running with panic driving her, but suddenly she knew exactly where she was and, what was more, an actual plan came to her.

  With an insane laugh, she threw the broom to her left and cut right, racing through the front door of the Jiffy Lube and slamming it behind her.

  At least a hundred of the dead charged after the broom and the burning sheets, stomping them out. An equal number attacked the Jiffy Lube. The metal door was bent in and torn down in a crash of huge fists, while the front window was smashed in even faster. That was just fine with Jenn who needed only seconds to put her plan in motion. As the creatures swept around the building and bashed their way inside, she threw down the barrel of used oil and set her lighter to it. Before the first of the dead charged into the bay, the barrel was covered in flames. She kicked it out into the street and then ducked down into one of the black pits.

  She had visions of the barrel rolling like a ball of fire all the way down to the docks, where it would smash into the flagship of the Corsairs and burn it down to its waterline.

  Nothing so spectacular happened. The barrel rolled with a side spin halfway down one block before it veered off the street, bounced over a curb and struck a fire hydrant. This knocked the barrel back on course, but the spin sent it into the curb again where it burst open. Burning oil poured down the gutter for another fifty feet or so before emptying into the sewer where it set fire to a dozen years of moldering leaves that burned with such a dense cloud of black smoke that the flames were hidden and the dead turned away.

  It wasn’t a complete bust, however. The grey wave of zombies that had followed the barrel now moved on to the closest noise which happened to be the Corsairs attempting to get their boats away from the harbor as fast as they could in complete darkness.

  It was pure chaos. They had docked haphazardly with the larger ships in close and crowded by the smaller ones. Men ran around trying to find their ships, not knowing which dock was which. Some boats were overloaded with so many men that they fell over each other trying to get them moving, while other boats sat empty and in the way.

  When two ships collided and became locked together, shouts erupted and flashlights beamed back and forth. The dead went crazy and rushed full onto the docks, or waded out to grab the boats and hold them fast. The strength of the dead was fantastic. Boats were overturned and the men either drowned or were eaten alive.

  Gunshots began to ring out, which only had more of the dead rushing in. Desperation turned to panic and in the mad scramble to get away a third of the fleet was abandoned by the rest, as the boats that could get away raced out of the bay. Along with the boats, over a hundred men were left behind. They ran north with the dead charging after.

  Jenn watched this, sitting with her back against the Jiffy Lube. It played out in shadows but she saw enough to know that they had won an amazing victory. Although she was exhausted and drained, the reason she sat there for over half an hour was that victory or not, there would be casualties and she would be blamed.

  She was still sitting there when she heard twigs snap and pebbles kicked. A smile spread across her face. Even before she saw his shadow she knew. On the ocean he was a king, on land…well, he tried. “Mike. I’m over here.”

  He had the M4. The little red battery light gave away the fact that he was sizing her up. “Are you alright?”

  The best way to answer that was not to answer it at all. “Sit,” she said, patting the cement next to her. When
he eased down, groaning like an old man, she asked, “How bad is it?”

  His eyes were red and swollen, but his smile lit up the night. “Not bad at all. Two hurt, well three if you count Stu. He had a stitch come undone and is bleeding like a stuck pig. I was coming out to find you anyway, but Jillybean rushed out and stopped me at the gate. She said she wants you to assist her. She said you need to learn the fine art of surgeoning.”

  “Huh. She wants me to be a doctor? What else did she say?”

  He hesitated before answering, “She said that there’s only time for me to kiss you for one minute.” Jenn was sure he was blushing; she could practically hear it in his voice.

  “Only one minute?” she asked. “Well, that’s a bit disappointing. Jillybean must not have believed I would make it. She should have known that there’s no way I’m going to stop at a minute.”

  And she didn’t.

  THE END OF BOOK 1…

  Generation Z

  The Queen of the Dead

  Book 2

  Peter Meredith

  Chapter 1

  1 Week Later

  The meeting room in the clubhouse was uncommonly packed. Except for the gate guard, the smaller children, and Manny Lopez, who was passed out in his apartment with one arm curled around his toilet bowl and the other around an empty bottle of hooch, the entire population of the Hilltop was present, sitting on row after row of folding chairs.

  It was an oddly rank congregation and more than one person looked askance at their neighbors through a haze of body odor. Because there were so many zombies roaming the city, fires had been curtailed and as the weather had turned brutally cold, few people had come within spitting distance of a bar of soap in the past week.

  Most pretended not to notice the smell as they sat with their eyes fixed toward one end of the room where the Coven was poised behind their familiar table with its familiar red tablecloth. Situated upon the table were three candles which seemed to throw more shadow than light on the grim features of the stern-faced women.

  To Jenn Lockhart, the shadows, coupled with their harsh unyielding expressions made it seem as if the seven women were carved totems rather than real people. Their dark eyes glistened like wet black pearls in a distinctly non-human manner. Jenn felt tiny and exposed sitting before them and wished she was either mixed in with the crowd or watching from the back of the room as she normally did.

  “The Coven welcomes Stu Currans to step forward,” Donna Polston intoned without emotion, speaking for the seven.

  It’s not much of a welcome, Stu thought to himself as he stood, trying to hide the sharp pain that marred his handsome features. His stiffness stole from his usual jeans and t-shirt, relaxed air.

  Although he hadn’t once complained, Jenn knew that his leg was bothering him. It wasn’t his way to say much of anything that didn’t really need to be said, which was why she thought it strange that he had been pushing to hold this meeting. She didn’t think anything would come of it; the position of the Coven had been made perfectly clear.

  “Before you begin,” Donna said in her strident voice, just as Stu opened his mouth. “We aren’t going to listen to any suggestions concerning pulling up stakes and moving to Bainbridge Island in one mass migration. Yes, we’ve heard the rumors and as much as I’d love for all of us to live in a fantasy land of electricity and hot wall water and working light bulbs, the Coven finds it’s all too good to be true.”

  “And Jillian is exhibit A.” Miss Shay’s accusing finger indicated the wild-haired girl who was scribbling furiously on a notepad, working out the kinks to some sort of proof or formula. Miss Shay refused to call her Jillybean and had been overheard on an almost daily basis sniffing, Why on earth does a mostly grown woman call herself ‘Jillybean?’ It’s altogether ludicrous.

  “Her mental state is erratic to say the least,” Miss Shay went on with a condescendingly arched eyebrow, “and while we appreciate what she has done for the community, we can’t help but believe she has gone through some sort of hideous torture at their hands to be this way.”

  Stu had always been a quiet man and a slow talker—too slow for Jenn who jumped up beside him. “But that’s not true,” she said, her voice an octave higher than normal. With everyone watching her, and many watching with sour looks, she was properly nervous. “Th-they treated her with respect. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “And with fear,” Lois Blanchard added. “Isn’t that what you told us before? You said they were afraid of her. ‘Even grown men.’ Those were your exact words. Don’t present us with half-truths, Jenn. We must have the real truth, and it’s obvious that Jillybean was mentally abused by those people.”

  Jillybean’s scribbling paused. It was an ominous sign. Jenn feared she would say or do something they would all regret. Jillybean was more than just erratic. To put it nicely, she was unpredictable and frightening. She had shown a hint of it to the Coven on the night the Corsairs had attacked, but they didn’t know the unplumbed depths of her insanity.

  Jenn knew her craziness better than anyone there and it was why she had done her level best to keep Jillybean secluded during the previous seven days. When she hadn’t been attending her patients, Jenn had kept her hidden in her apartment and had turned away a sudden influx of visitors, all of whom were immensely curious over the young woman who had managed to save both Aaron Altman and William Trafny, even though the one had lost his left arm at the bicep, and the other wheezed if he went from the couch to the bathroom and back.

  The only people Jenn allowed into her apartment were Stu Currans, who came by daily, and Mike Gunter, who rarely stopped by. For reasons unknown, one of the strange people inside Jillybean’s head didn’t care for Mike, and the two bickered constantly, much to Jenn’s dismay.

  “Jenn did not lie,” Jillybean said, sliding her pencil into the wilds of her untamed hair. She was, in more ways than one, a pocket Einstein whose head teemed with eccentric ideas and obscure plans, all of which seemed to generate some sort of electricity that made her hair altogether unmanageable.

  “It is true that some people fear me, but…” She had to pause as the room erupted in gasps and mutters and more than one: I told you so. She cleared her throat, loudly before going on, “Although some people fear me due to my mercurial nature, I am respected by the community. They have not abused me in any way. In fact, they have gone to great lengths to put up with my…”

  “Unfortunately,” Donna said, riding right over her, “as you’re not a citizen of the Hilltop, you don’t get a voice in these proceedings.”

  “Maybe she should be a citizen,” a small voice piped from the rear of the room. It was Aaron Altman who was not afraid of Jillybean and couldn’t understand how anyone could be. He was quite in love with her and made cow eyes at her every time she came to check on his arm. He made them again as she glanced back.

  Donna, affected not to have heard Aaron and addressed Stu, who had yet to say anything at all. “And as for your reports, Stu, you saw very little of the island and were under the influence of drugs. And Jenn, you were probably shown a facade. Do you know what that means?” Jenn hated when her ignorance was put on display and she shrank back with the tiniest shake of her head. “It means they showed you an illusion, a trick. They showed you this fantasy to sucker you in.”

  “I have to agree with Donna,” Melody Rinkman said, from the far end of the Coven table, her implausibly pink lips pursed. “It was clearly a trap and you can thank your lucky stars you escaped from it. But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that it was all real. How would you suggest we get to Bainbridge? By boat? The Corsairs took a hit, but they are far from powerless. We would have to sail for five hundred miles straight through their territory to get to Seattle. That would be suicide.”

  Lois Blanchard held up a finger. “Suicide is the perfect word. We aren’t sailors and we’re not warriors. The Corsairs are both. We’re safe here behind our walls and would be fools to leave. I personally would like to
put an end to anymore discussion on the matter. All agree?” She looked back and forth along the table to the other members of the Coven who raised their hands, one by one.

  “They have seriously abused the word discussion,” Jillybean grumbled to Jenn under the sound of forty whispered conversations going at once. Jillybean couldn’t believe anyone could possibly think they were actually safe behind the meager walls surrounding the complex. Their self-delusion had reached a staggering level. A dangerous level. “We’re going to have to figure out a way to change their minds,” she went on in a whisper to Jenn. “In the meantime, since I can’t address the panel, Jenn you’re going to have to get them to understand how important it is that we appropriate the remains of the Corsair fleet as quickly as possible. Go on.”

  Before Jenn knew it, she was being pushed forward and just like that, the room went utterly quiet. “Uh, hi. Can I speak? It’s not about moving, I promise.” Donna looked like she wanted to say no and so Jillybean gave Jenn another shove. “I-I think it’s really important that we…” Jenn knew what was being asked of her, however she was caught up on the word, “appropriate.” It didn’t seem the right sort of word for the sentence and she was sure everyone would think she was putting on airs by using it. “We gotta, uh, round up the boats. You know, the ones the Corsairs left. We can’t just let them sit there.”

  Donna’s harsh gaze softened, slightly. Not for a second had she or anyone forgotten the twenty or so boats left behind by the Corsairs. The entire Hilltop could imagine the fortune in food and ammo tucked away inside of them, but they also knew there was part of a good-sized horde still hanging around the city and no one had been willing to brave the danger they represented.

  The leader of the Coven drummed her fingers on the table. She looked to her left at Lois, who nodded as did Miss Shay and Melody. This was enough for Donna, who announced, loudly: “The Coven agrees. The boats are too valuable to be left sitting there any longer. I will need volunteers to go down to the harbor.”