GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  He had to ask her a second time and when he touched her elbow she jumped. “What? Up river?”

  “I was thinking we should try to find a hospital further up river. Every side street is blocked. If we try to come back this way with full carts…” He left off with a shrug.

  She shook her head to clear it as the whispers retreated back into the darkness. They had retreated but they weren’t gone. They were only hiding, waiting for everyone to look away. Jillybean put on her best fake smile. “What’s wrong?”

  Stu gestured at the cross street which was as full as the main street they were following.

  “Um,” she said, wondering what she was missing. Half the stores around them had their windows boarded over with inch-thick planks of plywood—wasn’t the solution to their problem obvious? “Jenn, you see it, right?”

  Jenn smiled and tipped her a wink. “I’m actually embarrassed for them.”

  Jillybean was as well but it wasn’t right to be mean about it. “Sorry about that,” she said to Stu and then shot Jenn a look. Shockingly, Jenn shot one right back. A dirty look. “I don’t know what’s gotten into…” Jillybean started but was surprised again as Stu grabbed her arm.

  “Do you need to sit down for a while?” he asked.

  “The way Jenn’s acting isn’t right. I think there’s something wrong with her.”

  Stu pulled Jillybean away, moving beyond the bumper of the Ryder where they saw that it’s rolling door had been forced open. An entire home’s worth of goods had been pulled out and littered the street. There was something indecent about seeing a little pair of underwear resting on a car antenna.

  “I need you to get a hold of yourself,” he whispered. “You left Jenn back at the warehouse, remember?”

  Suddenly, Jillybean did remember. A cold wave struck her as she asked, “Then who is that?” The girl pretending to be Jenn had parked one ass cheek on a faded, dust-orange Datsun. She wore a sly smile, one that was full of evil mischief.

  Stu didn’t have to look to know she was seeing things. “The only women here are you, Diamond and Johanna. Jenn’s not here. Do we need to take a break? It’s okay if you need to.”

  Jillybean hammered her eyes shut as hard as she could, her teeth gritted from the effort. When she opened her eyes, she saw there was no trace of the girl. “No, I’m good we can go on.”

  He watched her carefully as he asked, “But what about the blockage? You thought there was a way around all this?”

  “Not around, but over. We’ll take down some of these planks off the windows. They’ll act like ramps. If we chalk the bottoms and strap everything tight, it shouldn’t be a problem. Just a little more work, and who’s afraid of a little more work?”

  It wasn’t work that she feared. It was the return of the girl, and she did return. They had just pulled down the second of the plywood planks when Jillybean caught sight of her in the depths of one of the stores, a galleria where overpriced pictures still hung from the walls or were plastered flat within acrylic, standing on pedestals.

  She was behind one of these. Jillybean caught a glimpse of that awful smile, but in the dark, her auburn hair seemed brown and her blue eyes looked bigger and her chin sharper. It was a moment before she saw that it wasn’t Jenn she was looking at, it was herself.

  Chapter 26

  Jillybean didn’t need a break, she needed a cure. For ten years she’d been able to put off the worst aspects of her mental aberration by keeping to herself, by reducing her stress levels and by taking her carefully preserved stockpiles of pills. These three crutches were gone now.

  “I don’t want to delay us,” she told Stu.

  “You’re either taking a break or we’re going back.”

  And have two hundred more murders on my conscience? she thought. “I’ll compromise. I will take a break and catch up. Leave Mike with me if you’re worried.”

  He was worried and Mike stayed, leaning against the Ryder truck as nonchalantly as he could manage. It wasn’t as if he were afraid of the slip of a girl…not exactly. She was dangerous, that was true enough. In fact, when he considered it, she was probably the most dangerous person he had ever met, mostly because you just didn’t expect violence from someone with such large innocent appearing blue eyes.

  She sat on the stoop of a Kinkos with her eyes closed. He grew bored in two minutes. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Silent meditation,” she answered without opening her eyes

  “What’s that?”

  She slumped, her eyes coming open. “Just something I’ve been trying. Without success.”

  “Sorry. I can be quiet. Though I should know how long you plan on doing this for.”

  “Don’t be sorry and don’t be quiet. In fact, I want you to talk to me about sailing. How to sail, in particular.”

  The request made him distinctly uneasy. “Why?” he asked, unable to hide the suspicion in the single word. He had a perfect picture in his mind’s eye of Jillybean absconding with the Saber and leaving them stranded.

  “Not to steal our boat, I assure you. I don’t need to know how to sail to steal it. I could let the current carry me. No doubt I could let it carry me right out to sea with minimal activity on my part.”

  “Oh, I doubt you would get that far. There’s far more to steering a ship than just current. Gerry the Greek used to go on and on about angles.” Mike adopted the voice of an imbecile, “The angle of the wind will cancel the angle of the tide if the angle of the rudder is pitched just so many degrees and the sails are canted at blah, blah, blah. It’s all very mathy the way he describes things.” He gave a thumbs down while holding his nose. Then he remembered that Jillybean liked math. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he added, hurriedly.

  “I take it you didn’t learn from Gerry?”

  “Oh no. My dad taught me back when I was a kid. I was lucky I got to learn on the Calypso while everyone else was learning on this junky little sunny. My dad was a great sailor even though he was self-taught. He didn’t talk about angles, he talked about feeling the boat, like it was a part of you.” Mike broke off with a long look at a very old sunset that only he could see.

  When he started talking about boats again, he was only partially aware that Jillybean was even there. At some point she had begun walking and he had joined her without a pause in his narrative. She had no need to direct the conversation since there was no conversation. It was a lecture delivered with all the enthusiasm of someone in love with their subject and they both reveled in it.

  Jillybean felt free of the lurking shadows as she became engrossed in Mike’s mind, which was surprisingly deep when it came to sailing. His narrative even became poetic, although she was sure he would be insulted by the comment.

  Not even the passing of a pair of zombies derailed his train of thought and, after she had thrown a marble far down a side street to distract them, he went on again without let up until they reached the hospital and found the others waiting anxiously.

  “I could tell you more later,” Mike said, “but only if you really want to hear.” She wanted him to continue even then since he had distracted her marvelously and she feared she would need even more such distractions as the hospital was an exceptionally frightening place to both a displaced mind and to a normal one.

  The darkness within was full, wide and deep. Candles barely pushed it back and when they did it revealed an ugliness that struck a chill deep into all of their hearts. Something dreadful had happened within the walls. There were dried blood stains everywhere and there were bones still draped in rags. Frequently the rags were the remains of gowns worn by patients, but some were green or blue or pink scrubs.

  Along one wall the stains were strangely patterned, one every two feet or so and more old blood and bones were found in what had been puddles beneath each. They did not need to see the bullet holes in the walls to know that people had been executed there. The same sickening arrangement of bones, blood and bullet holes were found throughout the b
uilding.

  “What the hell?” Willis hissed. His voice carried in an unnerving echo which had the others shushing him. As far as they could tell, there were no zombies in the building, but it seemed like something haunted the halls. Sly noises could be heard whispering along the bone-filled corridors.

  Doors creaked and bones rattled. A giggle or a gurgle wafted down at them as they stood in a fifteen-person huddle, guns pointed outward. “Did you hear that?” Jillybean asked Stu. He nodded. For once, she wasn’t being crazy and for once, she wished she was. She was used to being crazy, but she wasn’t used to be being scared out of her wits.

  At first, she tried to use logic to explain the noises: a broken upper floor window could be letting in a draft which would create pressure differences within the halls, resulting in doors opening or closing—and maybe water trapped in pipes was thawing from a freeze which would account for the giggling sound that kept repeating, but why it was so high and childlike she didn’t know, but was sure there was a logical explanation.

  They pressed on. Stu led the way, looking as he always did, but he too was sweating. He shared Jillybean’s way of thinking: there was a logical explanation for everything, but then they entered a pitch-black staircase and logic began to grow fuzzy as they heard a soft thump, thump, thump coming towards them.

  His mind addressed the sound, categorized it and a mental picture formed: a ball was bouncing towards them. A shiver went up his back, because why on earth would anyone be bouncing a ball at a party of armed people? It wasn’t logical. This little thing undermined all reason and, along with everyone else, he felt a tremendous amount of dread over a bouncing ball.

  They all shied back against the stairwell door as it came into the light of their candles. It turned out to be only a red and white striped ball, the size of a grapefruit. It rolled up to Willis’ wet boots and he pulled his toes back.

  “What. The. Hell?” he said, over-pronouncing each word. “I’ve seen enough.” He tried to push his way through the crowd to reach the door, but Stu turned him around.

  “It’s only a ball, Willis,” he said and even picked it up to show that it was harmless. When his hand touched it, his arm broke out in a run of gooseflesh that he was glad couldn’t be seen. “Get my back. Mike, stay with Jillybean. You…” He snapped his fingers at the biggest of the ex-slaves; a middle-aged black man who had a keen intelligent look to his eyes.

  “James Smith, sir,” the man said, suddenly nervous. He had been hiding his fear pretty well to that point, now his eyes were big as pingpong balls.

  “Right, James, sorry. Take up the rear. Keep cool everyone. There’s nothing here.” Of course, Stu’s candle took that moment to go out, causing Diamond to gasp. “That’s enough of that, Diamond.” He relit the candle and started up.

  Mike had to give Willis a push to get him going. He then let Jillybean go and followed right behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder to steady her. He wanted to say it was going to be alright but, at the second level, Stu was stopped by a five-foot high pyramid of grinning skulls. The only way to get past them was to move them, but he was reluctant to touch them.

  “Someone’s just trying to scare us off,” he said.

  “They’re doing a damned good job,” Willis mumbled.

  Jillybean pushed through to examine the skulls hoping to be able to focus her mind which felt as if there was a black rose within it that was beginning to bloom. Half of the skulls showed signs of some type of trauma—bullet holes were obvious, depression fractures less so.

  “These are all women’s skulls and these two are fresh,” she said, shaking her head. The blooming black rose was unfolding, greater and greater.

  “What do you mean by fresh?” Willis asked in a soft, quavering voice. “Do you mean, like recently killed?”

  She turned one over to show the scrap of dura mater clinging to an interior suture line where the bones had fused. “And it stinks.” No one knew exactly what fresh skulls meant and they didn’t know whether to be alarmed or relieved. They all chose to be more alarmed and they began to mutter about going back. Their whispers echoed and echoed and seemed to crowd down on Jillybean until she suddenly grew angry.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” she snapped. “The Queen gave us a mission and we’re sticking to it. Come on, let’s set these aside.” She held one of the skulls out to Willis who responded by drawing his hands to his chest. “Stop being a little girl. It’s only a bit of bone.” She tossed it to him, forcing him to catch it. “Set it to the side and try not to be disrespectful.”

  Mike gave Stu a look. He only shrugged. Sadie was better than Eve…for the most part.

  “What are you staring at Magoo?” she asked and tossed him one of the skulls. The skulls were moved and Sadie went through to the door and into a fresh hell. The walls were literally painted in blood and were a dull reddish brown, the strokes of a large brush were obvious. In most of the rooms headless skeletons were propped up in beds or sitting on chairs, books in their spindly hands. Others were found arranged on toilets or standing at the windows as if looking out.

  At the nurse’s station, corpses were nailed to the walls and these bones weren’t the fading grey color like the others. They had been burned black.

  “Take a long look, Eve,” Sadie whispered. “You’ve met your match when it comes to crazy.”

  “Let’s just get what we came here for,” Stu said. He disliked the idea of Eve feeling there was some sort of competition in the crazy department.

  The vile insanity motivated the others to gather the supplies they needed as fast as they could. They filled their packs and carried as much as they could before going down to where they had left the carts. Then they went for more and more, clearing out floor after floor.

  Sadie drove them relentlessly and they didn’t rest until they had taken all there was and were back outside in the fine sunshine and the cold clean air. Along with some surgical supplies, ten large bottles of white pills, and more IV equipment, they had managed to gather six hundred bags of normal saline, which they distributed among the carts.

  By then the four Corsairs and the two ex-slave girls who hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place, had begun to grumble, while the six warehouse people who still had the cholera floating in their system were dropping from exhaustion.

  “Do we really need all of this?” Willis asked, when he saw it all gathered at once. While inside, he had been as frightened as anyone else and had helped load the boxes without asking any questions. Now, he was beginning to worry about the trek back to the boat. “I don’t want to tell the Queen her business, but six hundred bags? It seems like overkill if you ask me.”

  “No one asked you, Willy,” Johanna Murphy said.

  “What, I’m not allowed to talk? You know we still gotta push all this crap back to the boat and you can hear them zekes as good as I can.”

  The ex-slave started to get mad that anyone was questioning the woman who had freed her, but then a zombie stumbled into view three blocks away. They all shrank down—all except for Jillybean. She had sat down on a mat of dry leaves and had turned her face to the sun. It was warm on her face and reminded her of being a child, back in the before.

  She was looking inward to a time when it was just her inside her mind. A long, contented sigh escaped her that wasn’t even disturbed by the wail of the zombie. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know it was far off.

  “I wish we had the luxury of overkill,” she said, somewhat dreamily. “That would be nice, but this will last only a little over a day. The math is simple: we have over two hundred patients and six hundred bags. That’s less than three bags per person; it’ll go all too fast.”

  Willis went from complaining to being anxious. “Are you saying we’re going to have to go look for more?” That meant going deeper into the city and he honestly didn’t think he could. He was already shaking and weak, and his guts kept wanting to explode out into his shorts.

  “No. We’ve cut o
ff the source of the contamination, which was key. For the most, part the patience will be able to go without IVs very soon. As long as we keep them adequately hydrated and they get their special medicine, we should be good.”

  “What is the medicine?” Johanna Murphy asked. That she had spoken at all was a surprise to Jillybean who cracked an eye just in case the girl decided to reach for the bottles.

  “Acetylsalicylic acid,” was her honest reply. It was another name for aspirin. She was going to prescribe it, not for its pain-relieving benefits, but as a placebo. Antibiotics were the proper course of medical action, however she did not have nearly enough for this sized population. She figured that, as they were a simple-minded, superstitious lot, the power of suggestion would go a long way towards curing them.

  She allowed them to rest for as long as they wished—of course as they were resting in the shadow of “Hell Hospital” as Willis was already calling it, they didn’t rest long. Just as she guessed, even the sickest of them were ready to go after only a few minutes of casting glances upwards as if expecting a piano or an anchor would be dropped on them at any moment.

  There was, undoubtedly, a madman within its walls, but he wasn’t so mad as to try to take on fifteen mostly armed individuals. Stu could no longer lead. He and Mike took hold of one of the carts, while the four Corsairs took the other two. Willis led because he claimed to know the city better than anyone. He did a credible job getting them safely to a sporting goods store, where they picked up five more water bladders, four crossbow bolts, fishing gear and three water purifiers.

  At a nearby hardware store, they picked up everything needed to make a larger water pump and then they were off to the hotels where Jillybean wanted the last bit of room in the carts taken up with clean sheets and blankets. “As many as they could carry.”

  So far, they had been remarkably lucky when it came to dodging the dead. There had been very few in their path, and when some did stray too close, the group would drop down next to the thousands of abandoned, rusty cars and disappear as far as the beasts were concerned.