GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  “Them?” Mike asked, from behind his hand. The rancid smoke had just blown across him. “And why do you have bomb parts in the fire? Aren’t you worried it’s going to blow up?”

  Jenn knew next to nothing about bombs. She hadn’t even known this was a possibility and subconsciously shifted behind Mike. From over his shoulder she asked, “Are you even Jillybean?”

  “Of course, I am. Everyone needs to relax. The bomb won’t just go boom on its own. I’ve done this before. Except, I’ve never used magnesium and ammonia perchlorate as a primary explosive before.” Her lips pursed as she picked up a small black tube.

  Stu leaned forward and by the light of the fire he read the block print written on it. “Hold on, does that say grenade?” Mike and Jenn stepped back in what looked like a choreographed, synchronized dance move.

  Jillybean held it up so he could read it better. “It’s a stun grenade. You know, like a flashbang. It doesn’t actually blow up. I couldn’t find any blasting caps and I needed something. It’ll probably work once we get the casing off and when we get the batteries going. You guys don’t know where I can get some hydrogen sulfide, do you?” Their lost-in-the-woods looks told her they didn’t. “Then I guess you wouldn’t know where I could get boric acid, either. Never mind. We’ll find a college or something on the way to Sacramento.”

  She stared down at the mixture in the pot in front of her and became so lost in thought that she almost seemed to fall into a trance. Stu watched her for a minute before shrugging. “I guess we’ll get the stuff,” he told the others.

  When they were back at the gurneys, Mike whispered, “She’s up to something. Something bad. We shouldn’t do anything or help her anymore until she tells us.”

  Stu looked back at Jillybean who was well lit by the fires. She finished stirring and was now sanding the end of a pipe she had threaded earlier. She seemed perfectly content, which was surprising since she didn’t seem to have taken any pills; her eyes were as clear as day.

  “That’s not Eve,” he said. “I’m sure of it. And I don’t think Sadie is smart enough to do all that.”

  “Okay, it’s Jillybean. It’s still Jillybean with a bomb. Of all people, she shouldn’t be playing with bombs. And her reason for making them is…what’s the word? Suspicion? Whatever the right word is, doesn’t matter. There’s something bad about this. What do you think, Jenn?”

  The first thing Jenn did was look up at the darkening sky, searching for a sign. There were more stars out than she had expected, and yet they told her nothing except that the wind had picked up and had shifted to the northeast—towards Sacramento.

  “All the signs point to us going to Sacramento. There’s nothing about Jillybean.”

  “Signs?” Stu growled. “What about logic and all that? What happened to thinking three steps ahead?”

  “I’m sorry, Stu, but I can’t think three steps ahead of her. I’m lucky if I’m not a week behind. I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about back there. I’ve never heard of stun grenades or gymnasium acid. Besides, I thought you wanted to go with her.”

  She had been loud, her voice edged with hurt. “I do and I’m sorry if you thought I was calling you dumb. I’m just worried about all this, and I hoped you had some insight, more than the stars, I mean.”

  The three of them stood for a time in silence, not really knowing what to do about the bombs. In the end, they felt as though they had no choice but to load the Saber with the supplies and help Jillybean, who was delighted to have a somewhat captive audience, so she could explain her “modified ANFO munitions.” She also set them to work on a dozen little chores—cutting old soda cans into tiny strips, shaving the plastic ends of wires, hand-drilling a tiny hole into each of the pipes and testing the radios and the receivers using her two remaining batteries.

  Jillybean took it on herself to prepare the actual bombs and although she claimed it was perfectly safe, the others stood well away from her. She made a baker’s dozen and when, after five hours, she was done; the energy seemed to drain right out of her. She began to yawn repeatedly and argue with Eve, the two getting snippy with each other in a bizarre back and forth that made everyone uncomfortable.

  Stu stepped in. “It’s bed time.” She didn’t fight him and went aboard the Saber willingly.

  She was the only one who slept past sunrise which was when the gulls began to screech. Throwing their ghillie suits over their heads, Mike and Stu went in search of fishing supplies, something that didn’t take long at all as there were condos sitting practically at the end of the dock. While they were gone, Jenn tiptoed out from the little cabin she shared with Jillybean and out into the sunshine.

  It was a cold morning and she was glad for the shredded-up blanket/ghillie suit, even though it was beginning to smell of mold and the bottom edges of it were coated in dried mud.

  As always, she looked for signs, but her eyes got caught up by what she saw across the bay. The great mountains of smoke and flame had moved north leaving behind a nightmare of soot and ash and cinder. Spindly, black spires had taken the place of living trees and these poked up out of a grey mist that shimmered up from the devastation. Here and there, fires were still burning, though there were fewer of them and they were far less intense. There was little left to burn.

  Sausalito was gone. Pelican Harbor was gone. Probably the hilltop complex was gone, too. Jenn thought she was going to cry. Orlando had been a jerk and Donna had been unfair but neither deserved to die.

  Mike and Stu came back with four fishing poles and a tackle box the size of a piece of carryon luggage. Stu’s face was like a piece of white granite. He stared alongside her for a few moments, growled something under his breath, before dropping his pole, and sprinting away back up the dock.

  “Where’s he going?” Mike wondered, his stomach beginning to growl. They watched Stu race down a frontage road to a white office building that rose fifteen stories. When he disappeared inside, Mike turned his attention to catching their breakfast. They had very little food and the subject had been on his mind ever since they escaped from the fire.

  The tackle box held every type of lure he would ever need, and he was able to land a starry flounder before Stu came walking back with his binoculars still about his neck. “I think they’re okay. I could see the top of some of the apartments and they were untouched. Not even smoke damaged.”

  “Oh good,” Jenn said, with another glance across the bay. It was then that she caught sight of the Puffer, unfurling her small white sail and gliding out from behind Treasure Island. The sight of it jolted her. She could picture the boat crammed with sailors, and Gerry the Greek’s mad, bearded face leering at the Saber. If they came, he would demand the boat without hesitation and perhaps arrest them as well.

  Mike must have been thinking the same thing because he didn’t bother unhooking his fish as he headed straight down the dock to the Saber. Stu and Jenn followed, clambering on board as silently as possible. Neither wanted to wake Jillybean, worried how she would act in the face of this danger. Even though the wind was light across the bay, Mike had them moving in less than a minute.

  Up shot the black sail, catching all of the northwest wind it could and the Saber began to plow a white groove through the bottle-green water. At the sight of it, the Puffer heeled around, tacking south as fast it could. “They must think we’re Corsairs,” Mike said, relaxing now. He moved to grab the flounder which had flapped and flipped its thin form almost off the boat. Whipping out his knife, he cut away the head and fins, before slicing it open as easily as opening a book.

  Using the extras as bait, Jenn and Stu took to trolling, setting out all four poles. The sun was a quarter of the way into the sky when one of Stu’s poles jerked and let out a hiss of line. He had caught a pale white halibut that was just a few fingers over two-feet long.

  The little beast put up a desperate struggle and nearly escaped as Stu tried to land it. With all the noise, Jillybean finally came up from her cabin where
she had been cocooned in four blankets.

  In the bright light of day, she had a sallow look about her and the rings beneath her eyes were blue. She had not slept well; the dark corners of the cabin had held creatures made wholly of enormous black-lipped mouths. They had not stopped yammering on and on, sometimes using Eve’s voice and sometimes those of other people—people she had killed.

  As she came up and looked west to where the hills were black and ruined she couldn’t help hearing a voice chanting from the cabin below: You did that. You did that. You did that.

  Her shoulders twitched, and her breath caught in her throat, but otherwise she was able to pretend she hadn’t heard it. A laugh that was all anxiety and faux cheer, bubbled out of her. It hung in the air until the halibut slid right out of Stu’s hands. This brought on a scramble that went from one end of the boat to the other as the fish did everything in its power to leap to safety.

  “I kind of wish he had got away,” Jillybean remarked. “He put up a good fight; it’s sad that he didn’t make it.”

  “Do you want me to let him go?” Stu asked.

  This was borderline blasphemous to Mike, who cried, “Hold on! No one’s letting any fish go. You never know when your luck will dry up. That could be the last fish we catch today and I for one am starving. How do we, uh go about cooking that bad boy?”

  He was talking to Jillybean who had torn out the kitchen on their trip south so they could escape the Corsairs. “We can stop anywhere and get a little grill.”

  “Not just yet,” Stu added in a rush. “The wind can be as fickle as fishing. We should go on a little further.” He didn’t want to dock in full view of the devastation Eve had caused. They all picked up on his meaning, including Jillybean who acted like she hadn’t.

  The wind was fickle, and it was another long hour before they pulled behind Angel Island; now only the ugly haze of smoke above the hills could be seen. Mike gave Stu a pointed look, suggesting with it that he was quite possibly on the verge of passing out from lack of nourishment.

  Stu pointed them to Brickyard Cove. It had once been the home of some of the bay area’s most affluent and nautically inclined people. The homes were built right on the water, almost all with fading grey docks floating in front of them. In no time they found a grill and tore up one of the worse-for-wear docks to use as fuel.

  With the hill out of sight, Jillybean was in a much better mood. She brought out one of the pipe bombs she had created and asked, “Who wants to try it? I have to test these, you know. I’m still dubious about the magnesium and ammonia perchlorate combo as the primary.”

  This brought on another uncomfortable moment. Stu worried that an explosion would bring Eve out of hiding and didn’t want to chance it. Jenn, who had never seen or heard a bomb go off had an exaggerated fear of it and worried that an explosion would cause an earthquake or move the stars out of alignment.

  Mike was torn. On one hand, the idea that there were homemade bombs on his boat made his stomach, when it wasn’t growling in hunger, feel greasy with a low running fear. As much as he thought Jillybean had an almost alien genius, he still didn’t trust the bombs and worried that they might go off if the Saber hit a wave wrong. On the other hand, he was secretly dying to see what a real bomb could do. He felt a weird electric excitement at the idea that he couldn’t suppress.

  Grinning like the teenager he was, he said, “I do, please.”

  “What do you want to blow up?” she asked, just as eagerly.

  “You decide.” He had no idea what sort of power the bombs had. They were only a foot or so long and as fat around as his wrist. As much as he would have liked, he was sure they weren’t going to bring down a building, which would’ve been pretty awesome.

  Jillybean chose something much smaller: the remains of a sailboat sitting on a stubby cement pier. It had been in for a repair at the beginning of the apocalypse and had fallen from its supports sometime during the mad rush to flee the city. Someone had heaved it over to get a look at the damage and now a ragged hole, like a seven-foot eye, gazed up at the sky. The whole thing sagged like a wet cardboard box that was falling in on itself.

  With Mike watching through the hole, she placed the pipe bomb on a little table in the cabin, flicked on the radio receiver and crawled out, grinning, her restless eyes dark with glee. Eve wanted this, too. She craved it and wanted to be as close to the explosion as possible, but in this Jillybean overruled her and the four squatted down in someone’s living room, seven houses away.

  The explosion was exhilarating and amazingly loud. Mike felt the noise not just in his ears, but also in his chest as the air pulsed, washing over him with a warm wind. Visually, it was over too quickly to be as visceral. There was a shock of white light, followed by smoke and a rain of debris, some of which fell in front of them or tinged off the walls.

  With some hesitation, they went to inspect the damage, which was very large for so small a bomb, at least in Jenn’s opinion. But she was no great sailor and didn’t realize just how fragile sailboats actually were. This one had been on the verge of disintegrating even before the explosion which had torn the boat in two.

  While the others marveled over this, Jillybean went in search of shrapnel, trying to ascertain the mean distance at which the bomb could have killed.

  “That was cool,” Mike said. “Can we eat now?”

  He had actually been asking the group, however Jillybean murmured an absent, “Sure, we’ll get that going. I just need a few more things first.” She needed acid to make her batteries. Oddly enough, she needed depleted batteries as well, since they were already the perfect size and shape for her needs. “And if you see a sporting goods store, I’m going to need all the water filters they have. Don’t forget to check in the back. Oh, and water bladders. It’ll all be in the camping section.”

  “Sporting goods?” Mike asked, dubiously. The waterfront community was surrounded by an industrial area, crisscrossed by train tracks. “Where on earth are we going to find…

  She wasn’t listening. With the tip of her tongue just poking out, she was measuring and calculating. Even if she had been listening, Stu knew what she would’ve said— I’m sure you’ll figure something out. He shook his head, saying, “Jenn will get breakfast going and watch over Jillybean, while Mike and I get what’s on the list.”

  They were back in two hours, drawn along faster than was prudent by the smell of the fire and cooking fish. Behind them they lugged two handcarts.

  The acid had been the easiest find—three blocks away from the docks was a business that made joint compounds. Stu didn’t know what joint compounds were, but the danger sign near the front door warning that there were acids, inside was obvious.

  The water purifiers were more difficult to find since they weren’t well acquainted with that part of the city. Eventually they found a big box sporting goods store that had been mostly stripped. They found only seven water purifiers; three of which were dinky little things that could only filter a quart of water at a time. The other four were worked by hand pumps and cleaned water for as long as someone worked the pump.

  The purifiers fit in a single box and the acid in two. The carts were needed for the water bladders that they also found in the sporting goods store. They were heavy rubber or plastic, Stu didn’t know which, and could hold up to twenty gallons.

  Jillybean had already eaten and was pacing, trying not to worry about the black flies that were beginning to worry the edges of her vision. The last of her medicine was slowly leaving her system and, now these distracting flies were zipping around her, yet when she turned her head, there’d be nothing. She had also begun to hear whispers. Some were the obvious ones: Eve, Sadie or the dark thing that never let itself be seen, but most were tiny mouse whispers that always came from behind her.

  These hallucinations, unnerving as they were, were also totally expected. Jillybean knew her affliction and she thought she was in control, but Jenn, who was across the fire from her, didn’t think
so at all. Jenn had never seen her so twitchy or wild-eyed. She tried to speak to Jillybean in a soothing tone, but couldn’t think of anything to talk about, nothing satisfying at least, and nothing that would last more than a minute or two.

  The two were infinitely relieved when the men showed up. Jillybean threw herself into working on the batteries, talking to herself—mostly about the project, and usually in snippets. Eve would harangue her or Sadie would make a joke or try to bat her eyes at Stu.

  When this happened Jillybean would try to laugh it off or say something like: “Anode, cathode, electrolyte solution; what could be easier?” It was her way of covering for the slip.

  While she struggled with her sanity, the others loaded the ship so that now the deck was stacked with boxes and was harder to maneuver. Well, slightly harder. Mike was so at ease on a boat that he steered them out of the cove while dancing around the boxes and eating his breakfast, all at once.

  After Stu had eaten what felt like a pound of grilled halibut, he and Jenn set out the poles once more and then, as they had nothing to do, he asked Jillybean if they should start filling the water bladders.

  “With salt water? Or are you asking to use the purifiers? The answer is no, either way. When we reach the lower section of the Sacramento River, we’ll fill them on that stretch. If you want to make yourself useful you can go through the IV fluids and throw out any with a murky look to them.”

  This kept him busy until they reached the Sacramento River in the early afternoon. Then came the monotonous and laborious chore of hauling water out of the river in buckets, running it through the hand pumps and into the bladders. They had filled fifteen of them and Jenn’s arms felt as though they were lead when they came to a deep-water channel that cut a straight shot to the city.

  “Sorry, but from here out the water should be double filtered.” When the three groaned at this, Jillybean’s eyes flashed. “Then drink it and die! Go ahead! You’ll be crapping your intestines out onto the floor by tonight.”