GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  Jillybean looked up from her patient and said, “Uhhhh,” and then laughed. She had never made a proper soup in her life, and after carrots and celery she wasn’t exactly sure what was in soup. She told him to start there and then, when he’d left, she called out, “Jenn, hey Jenn, you in there? What’s in a good soup? I’ve never made soup before.”

  As Jenn blinked, coming slowly out of her stupor, a young woman, perhaps only thirty or so whose IV site Jillybean had been changing due to a blown vein, laughed softly. “You’ve never made soup? Wow, you really must be a queen.”

  “I really am,” Jillybean said, without looking up. The woman might have been thirty but her depleted veins were the tiny blue squiggles of a seventy-year old.

  The woman—Rebecca Haigh was actually all of twenty-six but for some reason was referred to as Miss Rebecca by everyone. She had bedraggled brown hair styled with a week’s worth of sweat, and blue eyes that were mottled with interesting brown flecks. She smiled warmly but wearily at Jillybean and said, “I used to cook all sorts a soup back in the day. I used to help out with the church.” She paused to let the significance of that sink in. “I could give you the recipe to one my favorites.”

  “Or you can give it to my right-hand woman. This is Jenn Lockhart. She’s a wiz at cooking, navigating and zombie hunting. I don’t know if you know this, but she was the one who killed the fabled ‘Frankenstein’ of zombies. It was over nine feet tall and all she used was a crossbow.” She had overheard Mike and Stu talking about it on the ride back after someone had mentioned how large one of the zombies that killed the Corsair had been.

  Miss Rebecca looked impressed. “Then I guess I can give it to her. But say, Miss Queen, ma’am there’s talk about you finding a big boat. Is it true? And why? Are you thinking of moving us?”

  Jillybean was at a loss for words. They had been back for all of half an hour and in that time the whispers had gone from person to person, shooting around the warehouse and coming to a conclusion with remarkable accuracy.

  She was indeed planning on moving the people, but she hadn’t even had time to figure out the best way to approach the subject. Her instincts were to slip suggestions Jenn’s way and perhaps set up some sort of sign pointing towards a mass emigration, if there was such a thing. With Jenn and her superstitions on board, there’d be no question of Mike’s eager inclusion.

  Stu would be dragged along in their wake, outvoted even before there was a vote.

  “At the moment, I’m only thinking of getting the barge afloat,” Jillybean lied. “A barge would be mighty useful to river people.”

  Miss Rebecca couldn’t hide her disappointment or the fear in her blue-brown eyes. “If you do use it to leave, could you take me with you?”

  “You would want that?” Jillybean asked, with a glance to see if Jenn was listening. She was listening, her weariness forgotten for the moment.

  “Oh yes. I hate it here. I’ve hated it from the beginning.” She lowered her voice. “A lot of us hate it here. The people used to be nice, but they all turned mean. And nobody ever leads. We’ve always been afraid of leaders turning into dictators, and look where it’s got us.”

  Jillybean smiled somewhat ruefully. “You know that in a certain sense, queens are dictators.”

  “Yes, but you are nice. Everyone thinks so. I do, too, even if you are mad. But I don’t mind it, no way. A person has gotta be crazy to come in this…in this crap hole to help when she doesn’t have to. So be the Queen and as long as you stay nice we’d love to have you, just don’t leave us, please. We’re not always like this.”

  The man next to her agreed through vomit-crusted lips. He broke down and begged not to be left behind. “You guys are like, I don’t know, a gift. All of you.”

  Jenn listened with a growing sense of pleasure. She had been working like a dog for most of the last twenty hours and here was vindication that her labors were being appreciated and that the signs that had guided them here had been a hundred percent spot on. They even managed to make Jillybean’s unexpected and worrisome assumption of royalty not just a good thing but even the right thing.

  She expected to see Jillybean smiling about this, if not outwardly gloating, however the girl was actually hiding a frown. “We’ll see if she even floats,” Jillybean said, without the bursting enthusiasm of only a minute before. “From there…we’ll see.”

  Chapter 28

  Jillybean finished setting the IV and moved on, her smile perfunctory with each patient all of whom had a kind word or an eager, pleasing smile plastered on their sweating faces. Any normal person would have been lapping this up. Jenn certainly was. She had received nearly as many compliments as Jillybean, something she had never heard even from her own people.

  It honestly felt good and it should have felt good to Jillybean as well. Most of her people back in Bainbridge had been somewhat stingy with their compliments to her, almost always adding a “but” or something similar along with them.

  It’s great she’s a doctor, but she’s crazy.

  I’m so happy we have electricity, too bad Jillybean’s crazy.

  Jillybean created her own antibiotics, now if only she could do something about being crazy.

  These weren’t actual quotes, of course, but it was the sense that Jenn had from everyone. Here, they didn’t seem to care about her obvious insanity. All they cared about was that Jillybean had a good heart.

  “Are you okay?” Jenn asked, when Jillybean took a moment to get a drink of water. “You seem sort of weird, even for you.” Jenn received a shrug as an answer. “Come on, Jillybean. This is all pretty incredible. I mean, you’ve not even been queen for a day and you have people practically worshipping you. So why the look? Why aren’t you happy? Is it because we’re really leaving?”

  Jillybean’s eyes darted away as she said, “Yes. That was always the plan. This place is too diseased and its defenses are laughable. We can’t stay here.”

  She was still hiding something. Jenn had come to trust her intuition and she knew Jillybean wasn’t being honest but about what point, she didn’t know. She threw out a guess: “Were you actually going to leave some of these people behind?”

  “No,” she stated forcefully. “That is not going to happen. When we leave it’ll be all of us. I promise.” She gazed so steadily into Jenn’s eyes that the truth was obvious…and yet, there was still something in those big blue eyes. She began searching them, looking deeper.

  Jillybean broke away first saying, “If you don’t mind, I need to give out the medicine.” She lowered her voice, “I’m telling everyone that they are broad spectrum antibiotics, but it’s really just aspirin. Trust me, it’s a lie that will help them. It’s called the placebo effect. I’ll explain later. Aspirin can cause an upset stomach, so if anyone asks tell them it means the pills are working and not to worry.”

  Jenn hated to lie. Even small lies like this bothered her. “I’m going outside to stretch my legs. I might even take a nap since someone should be up tonight.”

  “Hey.” Jillybean stopped her as she was about to walk away. “Are we okay? You know, are we still friends?”

  There was the slightest hesitation before Jenn answered honestly, “Yes, we’re still friends.” She had to look past those big eyes and past the fact that the girl was a murderer, and past the fact she had once taken her hostage, killed one of her people, got her banished and nearly burned down her home. When she looked deeper, she saw a girl who was infinitely lovable.

  “We’re still friends and I’ll follow you anywhere.”

  Jillybean took a sharp breath, looked as if she were about to tell her a secret, but it passed and the guarded veil slipped over her again. “Good. Go find a place to rest. I’ll wake you around ten or eleven.”

  This would give Jenn seven hours of sleep if she could drop off that very second. With the nagging worry over what was really going on with Jillybean, Jenn knew there’d be no chance of sleep just then.

  She went out back and
saw Stu and Mike arranging the carts on the deck again. There were only three Corsairs with them—one was missing. She guessed that he was dead found she strangely saddened. “Jeeze, I must be tired,” she said. Normally, she thought of Corsairs as being the only thing on the planet worse than zombies. After all, zombies didn’t have a choice about being as horrible as they were. Corsairs chose to be absolutely evil.

  She was sad, but not overcome by grief, and was still fixated on Jillybean and the idea of a journey. What she needed was a sign. Taking out her cross, she held it up to the afternoon sun that hung in the southwest and saw with shock that there was a black veil low on the horizon. It was far too dark to be a cloud.

  “The fire,” she said. It was still burning and still spreading, the unusual northwest wind was still blowing the flames in their direction—almost as if trouble was following them. Was this the sign she sought? And if so what did it mean? That wind blew in a sudden gust and seemed to curl right up her coat, reminding her that they were on the verge of full winter.

  “Danger is coming.” It was the simplest interpretation and the most likely one. “But what form would it take?” She couldn’t help herself and looked back towards the entrance of the warehouse, toward Jillybean. Was she the source of the danger?

  As if the thought had conjured the creature, a crow winged by. A single crow was unlucky. While she was staring at it, a shadow fell over her and a shrill caw had her looking up to where a second and third crow glided by. They were followed by an entire squadron of angry, squawking birds, all heading in the same direction.

  Without thinking she followed them around the warehouse to the next building over. This one, a squat rectangle of corrugated rust and tin, was much smaller and hung with a sign that was so faded that all Jenn could make of it was the letter M and the outlines of what might have been the picture of an oil well. It had an open bay door from which could be heard a cacophony of screeching.

  She stopped in her tracks, her gut telling her not to go in. Just turn around and walk away, a voice in her head told her. She didn’t listen. The door and the noise drew her on, partially against her will. At the edge of the bay door, she had to steel herself to look further and when she did, she immediately wished she had listened to her gut.

  Inside were the bodies of the people Jillybean had killed. Jenn couldn’t see them but knew they were there, buried under what had to be a thousand crows and ten times that many rats—the noise, the smell, the horrifying sight was too much for her.

  It was as if her mind had been extinguished by the sight. Just before she passed out she had the fleeting thought: if one crow was bad luck, how unlucky was a thousand? Then the world faded into a grey mist and she collapsed.

  A sharp pain on the side of the head brought her partially around and a dirty pinch on her thigh brought her more into the real world. It was not just a dark world but a black one, a strangely frightening, black world, one where the darkness glistened like oiled tar and rippled like water. Most horrible of all was that the blackness was alive with black eyes.

  Jenn felt stifled by the darkness, weighted down by it and for a moment she was sure she had died and was in some sort of hell. Keyed up, she shrieked when she felt another sharp pinch on her leg. There was a great explosion of noise and her face was bracketed and slapped in a soft, confusing manner until she realized that they were wings buffeting her—crow’s wings.

  She had been unconscious long enough for the sun to have set and the crows to have grown bold. They did not fly far. They stood or hopped around her, gauging her strength, of which she had very little. Her muscles shook from sheer terror and she had trouble getting to her feet.

  While she wobbled, a few of the more daring beasts darted in, one trying to take a bite out of her ankle through her jeans. She hissed at it, but quietly, afraid to provoke them into an attack. They didn’t normally attack people, she was fairly certain of that, then again this wasn’t a normal situation—they had been feeding on human flesh.

  The horrible queerness of the moment did not abate as she backed out of the building with the crows following after. Some flew ahead and found perches all along the warehouse wall. She had to pass beneath them, each staring down with hungry, glistening eyes.

  Jenn thought she was holding it together right up until one swooped down on her. A flutter of wings was all the warning she had. She flung her arms over her head as she staggered for the door of the warehouse, praying it wasn’t locked. The crows screamed what sounded like obscenities and swooped after her, though they broke off when she reached the door.

  Slipping inside, she rested against the door, her heart pounding in her worse than if a zombie had chased her. In a way, the crows had been worse than any zombie. They had been supernatural. She had gone looking for an omen and had found the clearest sign of death she had ever seen.

  She was still trying to calm herself when one of the ex-slaves appeared. It was dark in the warehouse and Jenn did not recognize the woman and the woman did not recognize Jenn, even when she bent and peered down at Jenn with eyes at squints.

  “Have you seen the new girl called Jenn?”

  “That’s me.”

  The woman jumped back, her hands up as if Jenn was about to hit her. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t know. The Queen sent me to find you.”

  “Well, you did, thanks.” Jenn expected the woman, who was at least twenty years older than her, and a head taller, to leave or to do or say something, but she only stood there staring with such heavy expectation that it pierced the dark.

  Her name was Shaina Hale and she had something very important to say. Jenn waited patiently for it to come out. When it did, it was disappointingly trite: “The Queen is great,” Shaina said, in a rush. “The way she stood up to Tony…it was great. Was she really going to blow herself up if we weren’t freed?”

  It had been Eve who had threatened to blow up the bomb which meant there had been nothing heroic or great about it. It had been totally self-serving on Eve’s part; not something Jenn cared to admit at the moment. “I’d like to think so, thankfully it didn’t come to that.”

  “Because she’s so great,” Shaina continued, breathlessly. This was fast becoming annoying and Jenn gave the woman a pat on the arm and started away. “And you’re great, too,” she added, stopping Jenn short.

  “I’m not great at all.”

  “They say you saved the Hill People from the Corsairs and they say you killed all sorts of giant zombies with only a crossbow, and they say you can see the future.”

  Jenn didn’t know what to say. No one had ever called her great before and she found it deeply unsettling. “Maybe I did some of that, but it doesn’t make me great.”

  The ex-slave laughed, a gushing sound that had a nervous intensity to it. “Then what does? I haven’t done anything. For twelve years I only did the least I had to so I could live. You guys did all this cool stuff and then you came here to save us too, but none of you wants to be called great.”

  “Jillybean didn’t want to be called great, either?” In a way that was a good thing. It meant Eve was still far away. She craved the adulation. Was Jillybean just being humble or was there a deeper issue? Jenn wouldn’t have even questioned this if Jillybean hadn’t also turned so strangely quiet when Rebecca Haigh had called her good.

  “No. She looked right at me and said, ‘don’t call me that.’ I’m not all that great.” Shaina said this as if stunned she was even noticed by Jillybean, as if Jillybean was some sort of star. “Then she asked me to go find you. She didn’t say it like an order, either. She said please and everything, like I was doing her a favor!” She sighed and then laughed, this time just a little thing that came from the belly.

  “She’s very nice that way,” Jenn said. “So, do you want to show me where she is?”

  Shaina almost took Jenn’s hand, but then thought better of it and only pointed towards where the only light in the warehouse was emanating. They passed the new clean area where two hundred pe
ople were sleeping, almost all of whom were still hooked to IVs.

  They went to where a couple of dozen people were standing around in a tight circle, watching Jillybean slice into a woman’s lower leg. “I found her,” Shaina announced, smiling eagerly.

  In the full light, Shaina was a sad thing. The cholera had turned her from slim to wretchedly scrawny. Her muscles had atrophied so badly that Jenn could have wrapped her small hand all the way around her nearly nonexistent bicep. She was missing patches of hair and a number of teeth, and had many jagged, white scars on what had once been an intelligent, sternly beautiful face. When she turned to present Jenn to Jillybean, the light played on her silhouette showing Jenn that her skull was not nearly as completely round as it should have been. Someone had hit her hard enough to dent her head.

  “You did great, Shaina,” Jillybean said, her voice much tighter than usual. “Thank you so much. Sorry for having to wake you early, Jenn, but there are a….”

  Shaina interrupted, “I didn’t have to wake her. She just knew you would need her.” She said this, looking at Jenn with reverent awe.

  Jenn didn’t have the heart to discourage her. Shaina seemed to need Jenn to be a full-blown telepath and for Jillybean to be a rock star. And she wasn’t the only one looking at the two of them with charmed eyes. Many of the others were gazing at them as if they had some sort of otherworldly magnificence about them.

  In Jillybean’s case this was true. She was different enough from everyone Jenn had ever met, to make her special, perhaps she could even be called great. There was no denying that she had changed lives with her brilliance.

  Jenn thought of herself as “just Jenn” and didn’t like how they were looking at her. She wasn’t the most perceptive person, but she could sense their awe was distinctly fragile and she was afraid that if she wasn’t able to live up to their vision of magnificence they would turn on her and try to bring her down.