GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

Stu couldn’t imagine anything that would make him think that Eve had an ounce of decency in her. Everything he’d seen of her so far suggested she was a selfish, vindictive, messed-up person. Humoring her, Stu said, “Maybe you’re right, but Jenn still needs her. If you are as good as you say, you’d do everything in your power to bring Jillybean back.”

  This eroded her smile and when she spoke next, Stu could hear the lies returning. “Sure, I suppose I can try for her sake.” She closed her eyes and let out a breath as if in deep contemplation. For a good minute she stood there, as the wind began to pick up, blowing her hair around, whipping it into an even wilder and more chaotic state than it had been, something Stu didn’t think possible.

  Eventually, Eve sighed in great disappointment. “I’m sorry, but I guess she doesn’t want to come out and play. Ah, well, what can you do?”

  Mike nudged Stu and said in an undertone, “Maybe we should try some of the math.” By “we” he meant Stu.

  Eve wasn’t deaf and before Stu could start spitting out numbers, she pushed past them into the auto-repair shop, crossed through to the back, stepping cautiously over the remains of the roof and stopped in front of the Saber. The wind tugged at its rigging and caused the entire thing to creak on its trailer.

  “How long before we can get her into the water?” she asked, when Mike and Stu had laid Jenn down next to the boat.

  Mike ignored the question and demanded in a voice higher than normal, “I want to talk to Jillybean. I need to for Jenn’s sake.”

  Eve, suddenly looking tired again, glanced down at Jenn who was wrapped in the blanket still asleep. The girl was pale, her features washed out by the blood loss and the dark. An uncaring shrug from Eve was followed by, “She looks good to me. Now, how long about the boat? We should be safe until morning. After that things are going to get dicey. You just know those old friends of yours are going to come after you.”

  “Don’t you mean they’re going to come after us?” Stu asked.

  She yawned. “Sure, I guess. If I’m still here, which I doubt. You three are so enthralled with Jillybean that it sickens me: ‘She’s so smart, she’s so great.’ Barf! It gets excruciatingly annoying. So, no I won’t be hanging out with you schmucks for much longer. I’ll probably just take my boat and go explore for a bit, you know, see what Mexico is like.”

  “Your boat?” Mike cried. “How the hell can you call it your boat?”

  “Because without me it wouldn’t be sitting here at all. I got you off Bainbridge with my skiff, and I got you down to Olympia using my batteries, and I got you over the hills and down to Grays Harbor using my cart and my zombie slave. And it was my plan that allowed us to get her.” She ran her hand along the side of the boat in a surprisingly loving gesture. “And besides, you owe me for fixing up Stu and that kid and the other guy, which was why you needed the boat in the first place. I do recall someone saying they’d pay any price. Well, this is my price.”

  Mike deflated, sagging like an old birthday balloon. She had done all that, and more, while he had done little but pilot the boat with a perfect wind right at their stern, pushing them along in the exact direction they needed. Anyone could have piloted the ship. Stu had done even less. He would be the first to admit he had been merely baggage throughout the entire journey.

  They couldn’t even argue that the Saber technically belonged to Gerry the Greek as compensation for the Calypso since that had never been part of any bargain. About the only argument against Eve’s claim was that it had been Jillybean who had done everything, but weren’t the two the same person?

  He was sure that she had a rebuttal for this argument and any other he could come up with.

  “Let’s worry about the boat later,” he said. “What about Jenn? She needs you. She needs you to allow Jillybean to come back. You like Jenn, I know it.”

  Eve leaned over and looked at Jenn again, making a noise in her throat, as if she had just stepped in something squishy. “Head wound, huh? Not much you can do with them, especially without an operating room, right? And did anyone grab Jillybean’s medicine or instruments? No? Do you even have candles?”

  Mike remembered packing two of them, both homemade and both skinny. They wouldn’t do for any sort of surgery. When he told Eve, she said, “How ‘bout this? If she’s still alive in the morning maybe we can do something.”

  “Something?” Mike was incensed and turned to Stu. “Turn her back. Use your times and your numbers. We need Jillybean, now.”

  Stu tried his best, but Eve only yawned repeatedly in the face of the numbers, her eyes dripping tears of exhaustion. He then switched to talking about surgery, then electricity and then Bainbridge, to which she only answered, “I’m going to bed.”

  She walked out into the night. Mike started after her, only to have Stu grab his arm. “Don’t bother. If we can’t have Jillybean then what’s the use? She’ll be back in the morning and we’ll use the Saber as leverage. No surgery, no boat. She’ll take the deal, don’t worry.” They bundled Jenn up and carefully lifted her aboard the Saber. The two then ventured into the lower part of the town, searching for medical supplies, blankets and more candles.

  Stu had never been in the town when it was this completely empty. The wind had built up so that it howled through the desolate streets sounding like a hundred hell-hounds baying, endlessly. Despite the bloodcurdling sound there was little danger. Driven by the wind, the fires were spreading all over the face of the hill. The undergrowth, though damp from the latest rain, was thick and the bramble and weeds were dry at their lowest layers.

  Smoke, nearly as dense as fog, drifted to the northeast as did the flames which were a murky orange glow stretching nearly a mile. Having never seen anything like it, the two young men stared for a long time in amazement.

  “That won’t burn down the apartments, will it?” Mike asked.

  Unlike the rest of the hill and the bay area in general, the area right around the complex was frequently scavenged for kindling and fuel for fires. The weeds would catch and maybe the spears, but the complex itself should be safe. “Naw,” Stu grunted. “Come on.”

  Although it was late, they searched where they could but found little besides bedding and pillows. They took it all back to the Saber, where Jenn slept on and on. Stu took her pulse; it felt quick and light. He didn’t know if that was good or bad, he just knew that she was still alive.

  Not two blocks away Eve fell asleep in a neat little bungalow, but it was Jillybean who woke long after the sun was up. As was her way, she did not budge a muscle, going from deep REM sleep to perfect awareness the moment her eyes cracked open. Right away, it was clear something was wrong. She knew it was late in the morning and yet the light wasn’t exactly streaming in through the window. It was a grey and sluggish light that made Jillybean wonder if she had woken at all. Sometimes when she was trapped in her mind she would wander through half-worlds where reality was warped and she was part ghost, part girl.

  But this was different. Her sense of touch was perfect. She could feel that the air was warmer than it should have been and she could smell smoke and something else, something her waking mind was slow to catch on to. “Charred human flesh,” she said, below a whisper.

  Mixed in with the autumnal smell of burning wood and leaves was the occasional sent of broiled human or, more than likely, zombie, which smelled far worse.

  In the last six hours, the wind had shifted and was blowing east, causing a great bank of smoke to roll down the hill. The fire had shifted as well and Jillybean could hear the unsettling noises it made. In her mind, the crunch, rumble and roar made it seem like the town wasn’t being burned, but rather consumed, as if it was being eaten by some alien creature with a million mouths and an endless appetite.

  You did that, a voice whispered behind her. She still hadn’t budged. She had been warm and snug in a nest of blankets—now, she went stiff as she tried to reach out with her senses. She was on a strange bed, in a strange room and she was alone. She
knew she was alone because a real person would have disturbed the air with their presence, they would have made noises. Jillybean would’ve heard the slightest shift, the softest breath, and maybe, if it had been perfectly quiet, she would’ve heard a person’s heartbeat.

  The voice wasn’t real.

  I’m as real as you are, it said. In a way it was right. The voice had real-world implications and had been generated as a result of real-world actions. It couldn’t be wished away, no matter how much Jillybean tried. It would have to be dealt with in the real-world.

  Slowly, her breath held and her body rigid in preparation, Jillybean rolled over to confront the owner of the voice. She was a firm believer in the idea that facing her fears reduced them, making them at least manageable if not eradicating them altogether.

  But there was nothing behind her, not even a closet. It was just a wall. The closet was to the left and was wide open, the shadows easily pierced even with the dull light.

  Do you really want to find me? Do you really want to see what I look like? the voice asked. Now it was under the bed and, reflexively Jillybean pulled her knees to her chest. Gathering her feet under her, she sprang to the floor, her black Converse high-tops touching down lightly.

  Ready to jump away, she crouched to peer under the bed. The shadows were much deeper here, still she could see that, other than dirty socks and a growing family of dust bunnies, there was nothing there.

  You won’t find me in the dark. If you want to see the real me, come in here. The hateful voice was coming from the bathroom. Would it be in the tub? Would the voice be coming from some sort of alien creature sloshing around in a pool of blood and filth? Or would it be a dead body crouched down next to the toilet, a gun in its hand, a hole in its head, its face dry and wrinkled by age, its eyes sunken, its toes eaten away by rats?

  Steadying herself, she went to the door and slowly pushed it open. Save for an old grey ring, the tub was empty, as was the corner next to the toilet. All the same, the bathroom was not empty. She could feel it in there and there was only one place she couldn’t see from the doorway.

  It was in the mirror.

  Jillybean was tempted to leave. Just walk out the door and not look back. “Face your fears,” she whispered. She stepped into the bathroom, her eyes on the sink handles which were both pitted from the salt air, or at least she assumed it was salt air corroding them, just as she assumed she was still in San Francisco.

  “Okay,” she intoned solemnly and looked into the mirror seeing a version of herself, one that was wrong. In the mirror was a girl with a wild mass of fly-away brown hair, a pert nose and full lips. But this girl didn’t have blue eyes exactly. The sclera was no longer white. They were so yellow that they seemed to have turned her blue irises to green.

  “That’s not…” She had looked down at herself; her hand was an awful yellow. “That’s me?” She felt it then; the exhaustion, the sickness, the poison running through her veins. Her liver was failing rapidly now and with every pill she swallowed, the organ hardened further and parts died, adding to the problem.

  Jillybean leaned closer to the mirror and now saw that there was practically a green cast to her skin and as she watched, a sore developed on her cheek. At first it was a simple red splotch, but it grew and split, pus dribbling from its now grey edges. A second joined the first and then a third. Now, her skin was grey-green and her eyes were listless. Her mouth hung open and a pale white tongue hung out of it.

  She tried to close her mouth but the effort was too great. Her energy was just about gone and so was her life.

  This is me, the voice said in a silky hiss. This is me and this is you. Do you want that? Keep taking the pills and this is what we’ll be by the end of the week.

  “Wrong,” she whispered, clutching the sink with her yellowed hands, barely able to keep herself upright. “The progression…” She swayed as her head went light. Before she knew it, her knees had buckled, and she collapsed onto the floor. Only slowly did her strength come back, not to its normal tweaking vibrancy, but to the same dullness that she had been feeling for the last few days.

  “You are wrong,” she told the voice. “The progression of liver disease can take months.” But hadn’t she been dealing with this for months already? Hadn’t her liver panels come back frightfully, high over and over? This couldn’t be denied, but a week to look like that? Impossible.

  Then two weeks.

  Her eyes darted up to the mirror and she was just able to make out crazy strands of hair as if there was someone inside the glass. “Maybe,” she admitted. According to her reading, sometimes people went downhill quickly. If she kept swallowing ten pills a day it would be two weeks. But if she didn’t?

  “What would I look like then?”

  Come see.

  She edged up to the mirror seeing a girl with great wide eyes—blue as they should be. Her skin was like cream and her lips as red as if she dieted solely on blood. Jillybean smiled in relief—then the smile kinked, and the relief vanished. Behind the image in the mirror was drecks of black smoke billowing from an unseen fire. She spun and saw only a plain wall behind her. When she turned back, the fire was still blooming behind her image. She bobbed slightly to get a better look at the source and that was when she heard the scream. It was coming from the mirror. It was a girl screaming.

  Canting herself far over, she could just see a figure in the smoke being dragged away. She was being dragged away by one of the dead. And further behind her was an image: apartment buildings on a hilltop; its fence thrown down and the doors of its buildings beaten in. There were bodies scattered everywhere.

  “No,” she gasped. Covering her eyes as she turned away. She walked straight out of the house and stood on the front porch which overlooked the harbor. The sky was hidden by clouds of smoke and the sun was nothing but a lead disk the size of a nickel. As she stood there trying to get her bearings, ash coated her. She noticed it for the first time: grey snow that left a smear when she touched it.

  “It wasn’t real,” she said, meaning the illusion from the mirror. It couldn’t have been real since she didn’t believe in precognition, omens, or any of that nonsense. It wasn’t real, but it didn’t mean that it couldn’t become real. If she didn’t take her pills it was a very real possibility.

  Already she could feel the darkness stirring inside of her and she jumped as something moved out of the corner of her vision. There was nothing there. A normal person would’ve called it a trick of their eyes. She knew better. For her it wasn’t a trick of the eyes or the mind, it was a symptom.

  She paused, feeling out of kilter from both the vision and the poison in her veins. It seemed like she was supposed to be doing something only she couldn’t remember much of what had happened the day before. Her last clear memory was standing over One Shot’s stiff corpse, seeing the syringe and realizing that someone had murdered him. Before that, she’d been in the silly prison and before that…then it hit her: “I was supposed to be killed. Clearly, I escaped and now I’m here.”

  The only question was how had she come to be there? She looked down at her hands expecting to see blood. There was black crud under her nails and maroon smears on the backs of her hands, mixing with what smelled like soot. Blood and soot meant that she had not only killed someone, but also started the fire that she was pretty sure would wipe out all of Sausalito.

  Just Sausalito? Eve asked, her voice echoing up out of the dark. I set a hundred fires. This bitch is going to burn not just Sausalito, but also Marin City and all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. And if the wind backs around again, it might go all the way to Sacramento. I’m doing your mission for you. A thank you would be…

  With a weary sigh, Jillybean interrupted, “Where are the others? Are they back at the complex?” She hoped not, seeing as the fires had nearly cut her completely off from the hilltop. Eve only laughed. Jillybean was about to ask a second time when she saw movement down the hill from her—it was a person wearing a ghillie suit, a g
hillie suit she had made. Mike, she guessed by his size.

  She gave the harbor and the burning hill a good long look before she began to creep on a course that set her right across his path. By the way he acted, she could tell that he was searching for a person and could only hope that he wasn’t “hunting” for that person as well.

  “Hi,” she whispered, as he got close. To his credit he didn’t jump. He was draped in camouflage all except the barrel of his M4, which swung towards her.

  “Eve?”

  “No, it’s me, Jillybean. Is everyone okay?”

  Mike interpreted the question correctly. “No one’s dead, but Jenn was shot in the head.”

  Distantly, Jillybean felt her knees buckle and there was a thud as her bottom hit dirt. The next thing she knew she was staring up at the angry clouds of smoke, tumbling across the sky as the wind took them east. Mike was patting her on the cheek. “Hey, you okay?”

  “Jenn? She’s been shot?” Jillybean tried to sit up, but found she was too weak to do so without help. “Did I do it?”

  To her great relief, he shook his head before going on to explain what had happened. The relief gave her a surge of energy in her otherwise hollow chest. She struggled to her feet and together they rushed to where Jenn lay alone in the Saber.

  “Find Stu,” she ordered Mike. “I’m going to need clean water in big pots, wood and real bandages. If there’s a hospital or a clinic nearby go there and get me a suture kit, a stethoscope, a BP cuff and something to disinfect the wound. Try Clorahexidine or Hibiclens, something like that. We’ll start with that and hope for the best.”

  He sped away as Jillybean lit one of the candles and drew back the curtains on the small portal-like windows. It gave her some light, though not as much as she wished, and not enough to do surgery by.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First things first.” She rubbed Jenn’s arm saying, “Wake up. You’ve been asleep too long. It’s time to get up.”

  A flicker of eyelids was followed by the gleam of Jenn’s blue eyes. It wasn’t much of a gleam, just a flash as she struggled to lift her lids. “What times it?” she slurred.