GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  “Simple as pie,” Jillybean said, without taking her gaze from the dress. In particular, a delicate, pale pink organza rose seemed to hold her spellbound. It was the only hint of color in what had once been a uniformly white background. Like so much of the old world, the dress was now fading into grey.

  “So how do we get out of here?” Colleen asked.

  When Jillybean didn’t answer, Colleen turned to Jenn, who had no idea. The stairs were the only way to get out of the house which meant they would need a distraction.

  “I will lead them away,” Mike declared. “I’m the fastest. I have the best chance.” Although it was their only idea, it wasn’t a good one. There were zombies tromping all over the house making such a racket that there was no telling precisely where each of them was. If Mike got unlucky he could run right into one.

  When Jenn asked Jillybean what she thought, Jillybean replied, “I thought about getting married once. You remember Nico, right?” Once more, her eyes were out of focus and her smile was softly crooked, as if her face couldn’t decide what emotion was pulling the strings. Staring at the dress had her thinking about love—romantic love and Nico’s face had just popped into her head. Somewhere deep inside her mind, Sadie made a purring sound.

  “I never met him,” Jenn said. “But I bet he was nice. Hey, how about helping us here? Do I need to have you do some math problems?”

  Ever since the night of the battle Jillybean had been relatively sane, with only slight glitches now and again. This was easily the worst she had been. Thankfully, Jillybean had the foresight to supply Jenn with a number of complicated math questions which would set her mind back on the right track. In Jenn’s coat pocket were five problems written on a note card and for some reason all the questions had letters in them. She was pretty sure they were a mistake.

  Jillybean had tried to explain how the math worked, but Jenn had needed an explanation of the explanation, which had led to even more explanations until she was wound up like a watch and completely baffled.

  Even more baffling was Jillybean waving a hand, dismissively and saying, “Hmm? Math? No, I hate math.” She reached up as high as she could and took the dress down. She put it up to herself. “It’s a little long, but it might do.” She gave the dress a snap, swirling the beams of light with endless motes of dust. “Everyone, turn around. I’m trying this on.”

  Mike’s mouth fell open. “You’re doing what? No, no, wrong. You aren’t going to put on a damned dress. Not now, not with the dead right above us. We can come back for it, okay? Right now, we should be figuring a way out of here.”

  “No. Jenn can handle it,” Jillybean said absently, her broken mind still on the dress. When she looked up from it and found Mike glaring, she shrugged and started pulling off her clothes. Mike’s eyes went wide and a second too late, he turned around.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled at the wall.

  Jillybean only snorted, or rather the person in her did. Jenn suspected it was Sadie. That part of Jillybean was adventurous and foolishly brave. She liked pranks and to tease, but was also kind. Jenn would have liked her if she wasn’t a ghost. Supposedly, she had died protecting Jillybean and she was still doing so in death.

  Sadie cursed over the sound of fabric rustling. “I need help,” she said. “Girls only!”

  “Fine, nut-job,” Orlando muttered, turning back to the wall as Jenn and Colleen went to Sadie.

  There was a lot more dress than girl and Sadie seemed to be swimming in it. “I think the train is caught on something.”

  “Train?” Jenn asked.

  “I think she means the back part,” Colleen said. “It’s caught up on the veil.” As they worked to free the train, Colleen caught Jenn’s eye. “Speaking of weddings…”

  Jenn’s throat started to constrict. “We weren’t,” she said in a whisper of a whisper.

  “Since we are now, tell me, is it true that you and Mike aren’t actually engaged? You guys never did—it?”

  The basement was so quiet Jenn could hear her own pulse in her ears and feel the flush of her cheeks. “That’s none of your business. And Sadie, what are you doing? We don’t have time to try on dresses.”

  This was no longer close to being Jillybean. Sadie smoothed down the dress and twitched her shoulders, saying, “Until you can come up with a plan, we have all the time in the world. So, what do you think?”

  Even with all the dust and her wild hair going in every direction, she was beautiful. Perhaps not as beautiful as Colleen, who spent hours each day becoming so and could suck the air out of any room she entered, but still beautiful enough for the three men to stare.

  As always, Jenn felt small and insignificant. “You look great. So, how about now you help get us out of here?” When Sadie declined the offer, Jenn pulled out her written math notes and struggled over them. “Here’s a question. There’s a three with a small three next to an X, and, and there’s a smaller x next to that, followed by a big, kind of curved C…”

  “What are you talking about?” Sadie snatched the paper from Jenn. She snorted, “A big C? That’s the beginning of a set of parentheses. And this is three-x to the third.” Her smirk began to fade as her eyes worked their way over the problem. In a minute she said, “Oh, that was simple enough. The…the…what am I doing in a dress?”

  “Being crazy,” One Shot growled.

  She was Jillybean again and with the pink of embarrassment in her cheeks, she asked, “And we’re still trapped? Jenn, you know getting to the harbor is important to me.” She began to pull off the dress with the same lack of modesty that she had taken off her shirt. Mike turned the others around to stare at the wall again.

  “I don’t know how to get us out,” Jenn admitted. “There’s no way to know where all the dead are. There could be lurkers. It’s not safe to make a run for it.”

  “There weren’t lurkers before,” Jillybean replied, zipping up her black jeans.

  “Yes, they were all congregated on one side of the house and the whole place nearly came crashing down.”

  Jillybean sat to pull on her canvas high-top tennis shoes, saying, “Ah, just so. And that would be bad in this case, why?”

  Jenn opened her mouth to blurt out the obvious—if they fell in we’d be trapped in a basement along with every zombie in the house—before she could, however, Jillybean’s hint finally caught. If all the zombies were in the basement, they’d be able to walk out the front door without a problem.

  “We’re trusting Miss Loony-Tunes?” One Shot demanded, when Jenn told them the plan. “I say we sit tight and wait it out. That is the smart move.” He put his back to the wall and slid down it until his knees were up to his chin. A second later Orlando joined him. Mike and Colleen looked uncertain which way to turn, so Jillybean helped with their decision.

  Taking the ski pole, she walked to the far end of the basement and began knocking it against the ceiling. “Hey! It’s dinner time!”

  “Son of a bitch!” One Shot cried.

  Jenn shushed him. “If you’re going to complain, do it over there.” She pointed to where Jillybean was standing. Already the ceiling above her was bowing in as the dead rushed into the master bedroom. Once more, the rotting wood began to snap, and nails went flying. The noise of the house slowly collapsing was terrifying, especially to Jenn and she was the first to hurry to the stairs.

  The others followed and huddled as close to the top as they could, waiting for the ceiling to cave in. As relaxed as if she were knocking on someone’s front door, Jillybean was still smacking the ceiling as the sub-flooring was pulled up chunk by chunk.

  Finally, the zombies tore through and Jillybean found herself looking up at a goop-dripping grey eye. Calmly she walked to the stairs, stopping to hang up the wedding dress.

  “She’s friggin’ crazy,” One Shot whispered.

  Jillybean ignored the remark. “We’ll get Orlando’s ghillie suit first and then proceed to the…” The entire back half of the house caved in, interrupting her
. So much dust filled the air that nothing could be seen, however the thrashing and the growls of the dead were enough to make the blood run cold.

  And still Jillybean was unperturbed—but she did lower her voice. “Jenn, take the lead.”

  Jenn checked her crossbow and was about to step out of the basement when Colleen pulled off her ghillie suit and handed it to Orlando. “I’ll buddy-up with Mike. It’ll be safer for all of us.” She inserted herself under Mike’s ghillie suit and snuggled right up against the handsome mariner.

  Jenn was suddenly furious, which did not lend itself to caution. With her lips twisted into a snarl, she marched out of the basement, through the blasted-in front door and went straight away to where Orlando’s ghillie suit lay pooled on the ground. She only waited long enough for Mike to grab it before she was marching again, taking the most direct route to the harbor.

  She was still mumbling curses when Jillybean stopped her after a few blocks. They had a clear view down to the docks—they were all empty.

  Chapter 3

  Seeing the empty docks had Jillybean’s head spinning and her heart running fast. Where had the boats gone? She’d kept watch from the hilltop all week and although the docks were hidden from view, she could see the Pacific easily and it had been empty. Nothing had gone north or south.

  They could see Alcatraz like a little grey rock sitting right out in the bay. If the people there had the boats, they would’ve been bobbing out where all the world could see them or, more likely, shooting around the bay, their black sails looking like the fins of hungry sharks.

  Without the boats, Jillybean was stuck on this side of the bay and that was a huge problem. “Jenn! I need my pills,” she whispered from beneath her poncho-like ghillie suit. She reached out a desperate hand and grabbed the girl. “You know what happens to me without them. H-how do we get across to the actual city? Is there another way?”

  She could only see little parts of Jenn through the holes in her ghillie suit. It was as if Jenn were a puzzle that was missing pieces. Her mind was beginning to feel the same way.

  “I think we have a canoe,” Jenn answered.

  Mike groaned at the suggestion. “A canoe? You can see the windsock, can’t you? And look at the chop.” He pointed angrily and as he did, a button on the sleeve of his coat caught on his ghillie suit, yanking it forward. With a curse, he pulled it off and began rearranging it, looking even more crushed by disappointment than Jillybean was.

  “Yeah, we can’t go out on the canoe,” One Shot said. “The wind will be in our face all the way back. And I’m talking a lot of wind.”

  Next to him, Orlando pulled back his hood and bobbed his head in agreement. He was visibly relieved. “We should go back to the complex. If ever there was a sign, those empty docks are it. Right, Jenn?”

  Jenn squinted at the docks and then shrugged. “No. It just means someone stole the boats. The only real sign I saw this morning was back at the…”

  “We don’t have time for this nonsense!” Jillybean cried. “We have to get across the bay today.” It had been ten days since she’d had her “good” pills. Since then she’d been using pills dug from beneath a partially collapsed supermarket pharmacy—they were crap, turning to powder with the least pressure.

  “It’s just the binding agent losing cohesion,” she tried to tell herself, but it was more than that. The active ingredients were compromised; the fact that she had been gobbling them up like candy and still Eve kept crawling up out of the dark part of her soul was proof of that. For the most part, Sadie kept her at bay, but the fights the two engaged in were mind-numbing. Literally.

  For the first week or so, Sadie had been prevailing, but more and more Eve was coming out. Only that morning Jillybean had woken up and found herself in a strange apartment, a knife in her hand. She had fallen asleep in Jenn’s guest room, that she knew for certain, but the next nine hours were totally unaccounted for. The fact that the knife was unbloodied was the only saving grace and it was a very weak grace at that.

  She had hurried back to Jenn’s apartment, unable to look anyone in the eye, afraid she would see some sort of accusation that would be beyond her ability to explain.

  “You wanna go out to San Fran?” Orlando asked, covering himself with the ghillie suit once more. “Then go, just don’t expect any of us to go with you.”

  With bald reluctance, Jenn said, “I’ll go, too. I know where a hospital is that’s not far inland.”

  Jenn’s hesitancy was understandable. All the blame for their last journey, from stealing the Calypso, to Stu getting shot, to dragging the Corsairs back to the hilltop, had been laid at Jenn’s feet and she was sure that any trouble they found across the bay would become her fault as well.

  Jillybean had done such a good job of hiding her crazy that she was looked on as the eccentric but decidedly brilliant doctor; Stu was the stoic hero who had bravely fought despite his injuries; and Mike was the talented captain who could tame a hurricane and out-sail an entire fleet of pirates. Jenn was just bad luck, exactly as she had always been.

  And if she went across the bay with Jillybean, Jenn thought her luck would go from bad to worse. There was the danger of thousands of zombies, but on top of that Colleen had an animalistic air to her and she had her sights set on Mike who was getting pressure from all around to give up on unlucky Jenn. This was especially heavy coming from the Coven who made it clear that he would have to knuckle under to them or there would be consequences.

  Mike had every reason to go back to the complex with the others, however he didn’t hesitate to say, “I’ll go, too. We’ll be able to make it back tonight when the tide goes out.”

  Jenn was just beginning to smile when Colleen took a steadying breath and announced, “I’ll go, also. I’ve never been across the bay before. Heck, it might be fun.”

  “Sorry to burst that bubble in your head,” One Shot rumbled, “but you aren’t going. None of you are. All the orders I got was to go down to the docks and see what’s what. We done that, so we’ll be going back, now.”

  Jillybean felt a sudden sharp malevolence swell in her. It came from the sea of darkness in her mind that rose and fell like the tides. Eve was there in the darkness and when Jillybean spoke now it seemed to come from Eve’s throat and not her own. “Look at how big you are and yet you take orders from a bunch of old hags who are too chicken to walk out their front door. They got you leashed and do you know why? Because you’re their little bitch.”

  She brayed laughter, which turned into a great roar of static that filled Jillybean’s ears, and just before everything went black she saw One Shot heading at her, a dirty balled up fist emerging from beneath his raggedy ghillie suit. He thought he was going to hurt her and the idea was laughable. She laughed and laughed, the echoes tumbling into the darkness with her…

  The next thing Jillybean knew, she found herself in a musty-smelling bed with the covers thrown over her head. She was lathered in sweat and struggling to breathe silently because…it was a moment before she realized she was not alone in the room. A moan, deep as a foghorn, filled the air and the floor thudded with a heavy footstep.

  Through the worn blanket Jillybean could see the uncertain outline of a zombie coming through the door, its head knocking against the top of the jamb and its shoulders scraping the sides. She knew immediately why she was back in charge of her body: she had been in this exact position once before as a little girl.

  The memory was clear as a bell: shaking, afraid, pathetically hiding in some stranger’s bed with nothing between her and one of the dead except a threadbare scrap of cloth.

  The sense of déjà vu had triggered a deviation from Eve’s neural personality track back to her own.

  There were marked differences in the two situations. The monster from twelve years ago had been a sickly thing. It had been a suburban housewife who’d been half-eaten before she turned and was probably one of the weakest zombies Jillybean had ever faced. Then again, Jillybean was just six-
years-old at the time and every zombie terrified her to no end. Luckily, she’d had Ipes with her.

  Ipes might not have been anything but a stuffed toy and the first symptom of her mental aberration but he was smart back when her mental powers were rudimentary and imprecise.

  Ipes had kept her calm and kept her from moving. Ipes kept her alive.

  Now, all Jillybean could rely on was herself. She closed her eyes and concentrated on controlling her diaphragm. Her lungs were filled with panicked desperation and, if allowed to, they would billow and blow into a hyperventilated state—and the zombie would hear her and kill her. Still, her diaphragm was a voluntary muscle and was under her nominal control, if she could master it that is.

  With a force of will, she overcame her body’s demand for oxygen and reset her diaphragm’s rhythm so the muscle expanded and contracted at a pace similar to that of deep sleep. Her breath became only a whisper.

  The zombie, on the other hand, sounded as if it were trying to slog its breath through a wet rag as it stomped into the room, knocking heavily into a dresser and sending a once neat line of books spilling onto the floor.

  Jillybean could hear the directional change in the creature’s breathing and knew that it was now peering down at the books. She also heard a long, shuddering human gasp. Chancing a peek from beneath the blanket she was shocked to see Jenn Lockhart squatted down next to one end of the dresser, the toes of her boots poking out and catching the slow eye of the zombie.

  The child version of Jillybean might have frozen in terror at Jenn’s situation, knowing the girl was a fraction of a second from being eaten alive, however the near adult Jillybean reacted with practiced speed. She reached into her pocket for one of her magic marbles and, with a flick of her wrist, sent it bouncing away down a corridor making its predictable, steady clacking sound.