GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  “There’s nothing there, Jillybean” Jenn said, taking her by the arm and leading her deeper inside the pharmacy. “We have to hurry before the storm comes.”

  Jillybean wanted to scream There Is No Storm! She held back. Screaming at Jenn would only be ladling out an equal measure of her problems without diminishing them in the least. Gritting her teeth against her anger, she said, “I’m looking for psychotropics.” She began to spell out the name of a medicine but saw that Jenn was lost after the third letter. Jillybean told her to keep watch at the front door, though there was little to keep watch for, at least outside. They both knew, the danger was all inside.

  As soon as Jenn left, the voice was back. She was right. A storm is coming. A great black storm. An image of a hundred black ships flying along under black sails blinked into her mind.

  “The Corsairs,” she whispered.

  Yesssss, the Corsairs. Just like you wanted. Remember, you think three steps ahead. You saw this com…

  “Shut up!” Jillybean cried, in a sharp whisper. “I’m here for Zyprexa. That’s all that matters right now.” She had tried other drugs: Propranolol had given her horrifying nightmares, Lithium had turned her into a drooling zombie, Sycrest had swollen her up like a balloon, and others, all useless or potentially dangerous.

  Luckily, there was very little demand left for Zyprexa and a great deal of supply. Unfortunately, it was mostly tainted or otherwise corrupted by age and storage conditions. And this was the case when she found a small supply. In half the bottles the pills were yellow, and in the other half they were almost dissolved into powder.

  She chose a few bottles where the pills were only slightly crumbling away and with gentle fingers took three, twenty milligram tablets and swallowed them without water. After a moment’s hesitation, she took three more. Six was too much; she knew that. She also knew she was right on the edge of a full breakdown, and the possibility that she might not come back from it was always on her mind.

  “But not today,” she told the darkness, her mouth curled into a sneer. She glared at the corner daring that thing to talk again. “I didn’t think so.” The pills had an immediate placebo effect and for that she was grateful. The darkness inside her pulled back and with a clear head she went to the surgery wing and began picking out the items she would need to operate on One Shot.

  Unlike the rest of the hospital, the surgery wing was bright and although there was some evidence that the instruments had been pawed through, Jillybean was able to find everything she needed, or rather nearly everything. In order to use a portable X-ray machine, she would need a way to generate a steady current of 220 volts of electricity; an impossibility within her current time constraints.

  Everything else lay at her fingertips and she filled her backpack before proceeding down to where she had left Jenn.

  Jenn’s first words to her were, “You okay?”

  “Sure, I guess. Why…” Just then Jillybean noticed her hands were shaking. She touched her forehead and felt the heat and the sweat. “Yes…I’m just feeling a little…” She swallowed saliva that tasted like pennies. “I’m just a feeling…” It felt as though her heart was going so fast it would burst. A check of her pulse revealed that it was racing but was so light that she would likely faint any second.

  She laid down and checked her pulse again; nothing had changed. “This isn’t good. Possible ventricular tachycardia.”

  “What’s that?” Jenn asked, taking a step back and covering her mouth with her hand. “Is that a disease? Did you get it in there?”

  “It’s a condition of the heart brought on by an overdose of my meds. It will likely lead to ventricular fibrillation and then to death. Could you be a lamb and run into the pharmacy for me?” Jenn acted as though Jillybean had asked her to run into a snake’s den.

  “In there? For what?”

  Large black blobs began to float in Jillybean’s vision. “I can’t think. Hold on. Let me see. The usual medication is um…Procainamide or Sotalol. I’m sorry, I don’t know their generic names, but the PDR will tell you.”

  “The PDR?” Jenn asked, suddenly terrified. “Is that a kind of book? I-I can’t read really good.”

  “Never mind. Just help me up,” Jillybean said, missing the stark look of relief on Jenn’s face. With one arm thrown over Jenn’s shoulder, Jillybean wobbled back into the pharmacy. She needed something that could correct abnormal heart rhythms, but the usual medicines were full of mold or smelled like ass. She had to settle for a barbiturate called Pentobarbital.

  She took one pill, hesitated and then popped three more. She expected them to be not very effective but the meds worked rapidly and in ten minutes she actually giggled, feeling a strange giddiness. It was almost like being drunk. Her heart still ran faster than it should have but she didn’t care. “Do you know they kill people with this stuff? Or they used to.”

  “Are ‘they’ the people in your head?” Jenn asked and then thought better about the question, not wanting to bring any of them out just then. “Let’s not worry about that. We have to get back before…”

  “Before what? Before the storm comes?” Jillybean was feeling so good that she was about to make a joke and was just gesturing upwards when she noticed the heavy clouds. They hung low and ponderous, and pulsed with chaotic winds. “How’d you do that? Was that a trick? Like magic?” She had snorted out the word, magic and sighed, smiling in a dreamy way at Jenn. “I think the Pentobarbital is working a little too well. I feel good. You know, relaxed.”

  “How relaxed?” Jenn asked, in alarm. “Too relaxed? We still have to get across the bay.”

  Her meaning was clear: Jillybean would have to get them across the bay—and that was alright with her. Just then pretty much everything was alright. “Hey, you wanna hear something crazy? I once used a bounce house to get across the Mississippi. I’d like to see you top that.”

  “A bounce house? I don’t know what that is.”

  Jillybean was strangely crestfallen to hear this. “You don’t know what a bounce house was? That’s so sad. So, so sad. It was an inflatable house that little kids would jump around in. Sort of like an enclosed trampoline. My friend Becca had one brought in special for her sixth birthday party. We had fourteen kids in it at once and we were bouncing off one another like those little Lotto balls used to. That was so, so much fun. Too bad Becca is one of them now. I saw her after, you know, and that was sad, too. I only knew it was her because of her red hair, that’s how mauled her face was.”

  She stared off for a minute, lost in her memories. When Jenn coughed lightly to bring her back, Jillybean turned sad eyes on her and asked, “What were we talking about? Oh yes, getting across the bay. Do you have any ideas?”

  Jenn’s flimsy grasp of logic failed her, and she shook her head. Jillybean lifted a single shoulder in a half-shrug. “It can’t be that hard. I’ll think of something on the way.”

  “On the way where?” Jenn asked.

  “North. This is Highland Hospital and, if my memory serves, that puts us three miles from where the Bay Bridge used to be. That’s the shortest crossing point to San Francisco. It’s barely a mile. We’ll cross there.”

  Jillybean threw the shreds of the blue blanket over her head and marched away. Jenn hurried to catch up, whispering, “I can’t swim that far. Not when it’s this cold and not with the bay as choppy as it is.”

  “You could if you had to, but don’t worry, something will come to me. It always does.” That something, much to Jenn’s dismay turned out to be a child’s pool, a round piece of formed, brittle, plastic, eight feet in diameter and fourteen inches in height.

  “You have got to be kidding,” Jenn said, staring at it in shock. She then looked out at the bay where the approaching storm was already kicking up white-capped waves. “You want to cross the bay in a kiddie pool? Really? It doesn’t have a sail and there’s no way to steer it.”

  Jillybean gazed at her fondly. She had the incredible urge to kiss Jenn on the
cheek and did so, leaving Jenn even more shocked than before. It made Jillybean laugh. “You really are kinda very courageous, you know that? I wish I was that brave. You know why? Because I was scared that the wind would flip us, or that we’d take on so much water that we would flounder and sink and drown to death and the crabs would eat our rotting bodies.”

  “And I’m worried about that, too,” Jenn replied in a small voice.

  “Oh, you’re just saying that to make me feel good. That’s so nice. Let me put your mind at rest. There is so much wind that we don’t need a sail and as for steering, we can remedy that with a few oars of proper size. Didn’t we pass like a thousand different piers? I think we did. Wait here.”

  She left Jenn standing there as she dragged the pool straight down the hill to the bay. After a second, Jenn caught up and took hold of one side of the pool and only just in time as the freezing wind began to pick up.

  The wind stung any exposed body part and the ghillie suits, with their many holes, offered little protection.

  When they got to the water’s edge and Jillybean saw Jenn begin to shiver, she snapped her fingers with sudden, brilliant insight. “Hey, you’re cold! Okay, I can fix that. Plant yourself right here.” She set Jenn in the pool like a human paperweight to keep it from blowing away, and left to outfit them properly. Ten minutes later, she came back with a garbage bag bulging with hats, gloves, coats, rubber boots, yellow slickers and extra clothes. “Put these on. I’ll be right back.”

  She was back in five minutes, wearing a triumphant smile and proclaimed, “I found a rowing club!”

  Jenn jumped up in excitement. “Rowing? Do you mean a place with boats?”

  “Of course! They have a bunch and they have oars. Come look.”

  “Oars?” The excitement on Jenn’s face dimmed and when they walked into the dim interior of the rowing club it faded altogether. There were eighteen boats in the establishment and not one would be of any use to them. They were long and so narrow that even the girls, with their skinny hips, could barely fit into them and worse, they had less than a foot of draft, meaning that they couldn’t sit in the boat, they’d basically have to sit on the boat with only a few inches of wood between them and the water. Every wave on the bay would come right over the top of them.

  “Why did you show this to me?” Jenn groused, pulling off her ghillie suit.

  “Because, look at these oars.” Jillybean marveled over them. “I know what you’re thinking, they aren’t for rowing, they’re for steering.”

  “I don’t think I was thinking that. I was thinking we’re going to die.”

  Jillybean laughed as she leaned the oar against a wall and formed her hands into a circle saying, “Imagine this is the pool. The wind is out of the northwest, if we use a single oar as a rudder, we’ll only spin.” As if Jenn didn’t know what spin was, Jillybean rotated her hands. “The second oar will be to counter that spin. It will add to the drag, but we only have a mile to cover. It should be all good.”

  It was not.

  Chapter 5

  The wind had picked up even more and twice snatched the plastic pool from their hands, sending it rolling like a dropped quarter down the street. Jillybean chased after it, the shredded blue blanket tied at her neck flapping behind her. In the fading light she looked like a spirit, but as she giggled as she ran, Jenn was not undone by the view as she might normally have been.

  The wind now brought with it a stinging rain that was mostly ice crystals. They came zipping in at a slant, forcing the two girls to walk behind the blue pool. The weather was a hardship that was also a blessing: the dead had scattered to hide indoors, allowing the two of them to make it down to the jutting finger of land that poked out into the bay from West Oakland.

  A mile and a half away was the financial district of San Francisco, the closest point. A mile or so to the northwest of them was Alcatraz and beyond that was The Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands and then home. Jenn stared longingly in that direction as Jillybean worked out the forces at play that would push the little pool south.

  “It’s forty miles to the end of the bay,” Jenn told her, afraid that if Jillybean messed things up they would be on the bay for hours before fetching up just north of Santa Clara. It wouldn’t be only One Shot who would die if the wind took them that far.

  “I’m aware,” Jillybean said. “Get in, I’ll hold it for you.” Jenn eyed the pool with perfectly reasonable apprehension. “Go on. It won’t bite.”

  Jenn approached the pool in an altogether skittish manner, fearing she would go plunging through the plastic if she put too much weight at any one point. After testing the floor of the pool with one foot and not liking the way in which it sagged, she thought she’d try going in butt first. A more clumsy and ungainly manner couldn’t have been contrived and she slipped and slithered on the wet plastic. Above her, Jillybean struggled to contain her laughter which in the end came peeling out high and loud.

  This earned her a glare from Jenn. “Let’s see you do it.” With no one holding the heaving boat next to the dock she figured Jillybean would fall overboard and, cross as she was, she was prepared to laugh even louder than Jillybean had.

  “Hold the end of these,” Jillybean said, giving Jenn the working ends of the oars. When she had them resting on her thighs, Jillybean laid the other ends on the dock about a shoulder width apart. Putting herself between them, her weight distributed evenly, she easily slipped into the pool, settling in on her knees.

  Jenn couldn’t hide her disappointment or her anger. “You could have shown me that before I…” Her perfectly righteous indignation suddenly withered to nothing, replaced by concern. “Hey, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “My eyes? Oh right.” Jillybean sighed, looking abruptly tired. “Are the sclera slightly yellow in color?”

  “Sclera? Do you mean the white part? Yeah. I didn’t notice it before but with the snow it’s kinda obvious. What’s it mean? Are you sick?”

  “In a way, I am. It’s called jaundice and is a symptom of liver disease. It’s the meds I take. Although they have lost their potency they are still a toxin, meaning they are a strain on the body. Really, it’s nothing for you to worry about, especially here and now. We have enough on our plate.”

  She wasn’t lying about that. Jillybean used one of the oars to shove them away from the dock, and now the wind was driving them straight south and waves were bouncing them up and down. “Slide over and put your oar in the water, just so,” Jillybean said, indicating what she wanted by using her own oar. They spun slowly as Jillybean tried to work out angles that would satisfy.

  Finally, she had the two of them set properly and if seen from above with their oars held stiffly in the water, they resembled the face of a watch at half past three, while their direction of travel was generally towards the seven o’clock position.

  The winds blew stronger and stronger, and the waves began to build from little swells to sharp-faced hills. Many of the waves crested over the lip of the pool and every few minutes they would bail frantically with the big plastic buckets Jillybean had the foresight to bring with them. Then they would get back to the business of straining at their oars to keep them on course.

  It was a terrible ordeal as the two of them were soaked and freezing, their hands simultaneously numb and screaming in pain. But there was nothing they could do except hold on and persevere.

  Jenn grew so cold that for a while she believed she lost consciousness with her eyes open. She held onto her oar and stared blankly until Jillybean yelled at her to bail then she would take up her bucket and bail all the while maintaining that frozen stare.

  This went on for two hours and if it hadn’t been for Jillybean’s constant cajoling, encouragement and yelling for Jenn to stay with her, they would have been lost to the wind or the waves. Just as Jenn thought she could feel her blood as it flowed like a slurry through her veins, Jillybean said, “We’re close now, Jenn. Stay with me.” Jenn turned her head up and saw
a looming two-hundred foot high port crane. In the dark and the whipping snow, it looked a bit like a giant insect and had Jenn been able to muster the strength for an emotion she might have been frightened.

  “Maybe we should paddle,” Jillybean suggested; she sounded drunk and when Jenn turned her torpid gaze from the insect-like crane she saw the yellow had advanced in Jillybean’s eyes.

  She looked terrible, but just then Jenn couldn’t find the energy to care. “Paddle?” The oars were too big for normal paddling and so Jenn did her best to push them back and forth on a short arc somewhat like a Venetian gondolier. Jillybean tried to help but she had spent the last of her energy getting them across the bay. Her oar slipped out of her hands and floated away.

  She tried to splash them along with her hands and the attempt was so miserably pathetic that Jenn rallied the last of her strength. “Don’t,” Jenn said. “I’ll get us there.” She knew approximately where they were: along the southeastern edge of San Francisco where the warehouses, those that were still standing, were ugly with rust and broken windows. Most were missing their roofs and all of them were in a state of near collapse and were exceedingly dangerous. Even as she thought this, the blowing wind took one down with a thundering crash that echoed throughout the city. It was a dark, lonely sound.

  The sun was far away, well beyond the horizon by the time they finally bumped up along a jumbled shore of rotting wood, broken asphalt and green, algae-covered styrofoam. The two girls climbed out of the pool and slogged onto land. Jillybean was stooped over, barely able to stand, and had to be half-carried by Jenn.

  The two stumbled inland, desperately in need of shelter and warmth and were lucky enough to find a small structure whose walls were composed of cinderblock and whose roof was little more than simple corrugated metal held down by a few one-inch nails. The windowless building was about the size of a two-car garage and smelled of old oil.