GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  “And you think we should stay?” he asked. “Here?” The idea galled him. Not only was the warehouse disgusting, he had the barge to think about. It was a boat of sorts and having it just sit at a pier was practically a sin. “Maybe we can find a different spot. I have a map of the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin. There could be some prime spots.”

  This was no answer to their problems. “If the barge can get there, then the Corsairs can as well. I don’t know what to do. Things aren’t exactly straightforward.” She was reluctant to mention what she had seen earlier. The smoke was still above them, but in her mind, it seemed to be above Mike mostly. Was that just her fear of losing him? Or…she was suddenly aware that he was waiting for her to explain, only she knew she couldn’t. Jillybean was right. She didn’t know what these signs meant beyond death and danger, and perhaps some sort of mixing of good and bad.

  Their time alone was up before she could think of anything to say. Jillybean called from the barge. “Mike! We need to consider an anchor.”

  “I gotta go,” he said and yet he didn’t scoot right off. Before she knew it, his lips were on hers, warm and soft. The kiss went on for a wonderfully long time.

  At first, Jenn expected Jillybean to holler again. She could radiate impatience when the mood was on her, as it seemed to be then. But as soon as Mike gave Jenn’s hand one last squeeze, Jenn saw Mike was being drawn away, not for his expertise with anchors and the fundamentals of a capstan, which was a big spool used to drag the anchor up, but to keep him too busy to dwell on Jenn’s signs or Stu’s fears.

  Jenn was sure that she would be put to work, as well and sure enough, Willis met her with a long, soul-weary sigh. “She says we need sheet metal now and more rope and when I told her there were a number of breweries around here, she got all excited and said we have to have barley. Lots of it.”

  Jenn didn’t know what barley was, but suspected it fell into the category of busy work.

  Although her heart was running faster than normal and her hands were sweaty, it wouldn’t do to start contradicting the queen or sowing seeds of discord. She went along with Willis and four others and didn’t return until well after dark. By then the warehouse had been wholly abandoned and the entire population was aboard the barge. They were the last to board and when they did, Jillybean clapped her hands together once.

  “We should get moving,” she said.

  “Jillybean,” Stu growled. “You can’t be serious.”

  The Queen turned a hard eye on Stu and the two stared so long at each other that everyone around them grew uncomfortable. “Would you like to lead?” she asked.

  “I never said that,” he replied.

  “Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?” Eve had every time she opened her mouth, but Jillybean hadn’t. He shook his head, breaking eye contact. “Then get aboard the Saber and prepare to cast off. You too, Jenn. We’ll only be traveling about twenty miles tonight. The river narrows just after the Paintersville Bridge and I don’t feel comfortable chancing that in the dark.”

  While Jenn had been gone, an anchor and a rotating capstan to raise and lower it had been added to the rear of the barge. It was the only independent control that the barge possessed and they hadn’t even gone a mile before the anchor had to be dropped.

  With ropes strung from the barge to the Saber, Mike sent her on a course that he assumed would take them straight down the middle of the river. For reasons he could not fathom, the barge did not cooperate and heeled heavily to starboard and dragged the relatively tiny Saber along with it.

  Desperately, he tried to correct, aiming the bow of the Saber at the eastern bank. This changed the course of the barge, however, the wind died and before they knew it, they were being swept sideways downriver.

  Mike cursed as one of the ropes suddenly snapped. “Drop the anchor! Drop the anchor!” he cried, bringing the boom around and spinning the wheel, frantic to get out of the way of a hundred-ton hunk of metal the size of a building that was looming behind him.

  He wanted to cut the last ropes, but to do so would mean giving up on the barge and perhaps losing it forever if it struck a submerged rock near the shallow bank. Its immense weight and momentum would tear a hole in its hull that would be impossible to patch without getting the boat out of the water—an utter impossibility.

  James Smith was at the anchor and had been expecting the cry. He dropped the anchor and waited with his heart in his throat and one hand on the chain. He could feel the edge digging at the river bottom, digging but not catching.

  It slowed them considerably and with the Saber hauling them around, their speed, which had never been greater than five miles an hour, became a sluggish one and a half and finally they came to a complete stop.

  Mike drew the Saber in, came aboard and immediately rushed back to the anchor chain. He didn’t like the hold it had on the bottom either. “We’ll need to keep a watch. If the barge begins to move, send up a cry.” Just in case, he moved the Saber upstream, pointed her north and reattached the ropes.

  “It’s the best we can do,” he said, coming down into the hold where Jillybean was fiddling with some chemicals. She was going to make more batteries…on board. Mike felt a little sick at the sight of the acid. “Wouldn’t that be easier on the barge?”

  “Perhaps,” she admitted, “but I felt I should give you the opportunity to ask questions I would never answer in any other company.”

  Now that they were afforded this liberal opportunity, each suddenly felt the fear that had been growing inside of them, but none wanted to look afraid in front of the others. It made them shy, and they each waited for someone else to throw out the first question.

  When they hesitated too long she decided to just start talking. “Up until two weeks ago, the Hill People were just a rumor to the Corsairs. They’ve known about the people of Sacramento, and the Guardians and the Santas but you were too small a group to make much news. Now they know better. They’ve seen your little village and they know your numbers can’t be great.”

  She turned her gaze to Mike. “They also have a guess about Alcatraz. And before you ask, I know this because I have interviewed a number of the Corsairs over the last few years.”

  “Interviewed?” Stu asked, nervously.

  “Don’t get caught up in semantics. I asked questions and they answered, under duress. Leave it at that. The gist of these interviews is that the Corsairs have been growing in numbers. When they catch younger men, they are given the choice between joining the Corsairs or being hung over a spit and roasted alive. Everyone joins.”

  Mike wanted to think he wouldn’t, or that he would run away at the first chance.

  As always Jillybean read his mind. “They have inducements against running that make being roasted alive seem like a good time. Almost no one runs, especially after the first few are caught.” She paused, looking both ill and happy—Eve was enjoying the conversation and the memories being dredged up.

  With an effort, Jillybean forced her back down. “I didn’t need visions to see they will be coming for revenge. It would’ve been the apartment complex first, then Alcatraz, and then Sacramento when they found out how weak they are.”

  “So, your idea is to go out to meet them in battle?” Mike asked in bewilderment. “Stu is right, we should run. The Saber is fast and the four of us could be in Mexico in a week.”

  Jillybean cocked her head in surprise. “You would run? I find that hard to believe. You wouldn’t want to warn your friends back on Alcatraz? And would you, Stu like to warn the people on the hilltop?”

  “I meant we should run after we warn them,” Mike countered.

  “A warning now won’t help. By my calculations, we have three days at the most before the Corsairs show up. It’ll take us at least a day to get to San Francisco and another half day to convince your friends and for them to gather what they’ll need to survive the coming winter. This will give them a head start of only a day and a half. How far do you honestly think th
ey’ll get?”

  Jenn pictured tiny Lindy Smith struggling beneath a heavy pack, hounded by the Corsairs on one side and the dead on the other. “They’ll never make it,” she realized. “They’d be lucky to make it fifteen miles and that’s if the dead don’t get them first. And the Corsairs have boats. Fast ones. They’ll be able to cut off any escape route.”

  “They could hide,” Stu suggested.

  “For how long?” Jillybean asked. “The Corsairs aren’t going to leave anytime soon. The bay area, and Alcatraz in particular, is a logical place for them to use as a base. Sure, your friends could go a day or two without fires if the weather doesn’t turn, but winter is coming. They’ll need fires to cook with and to keep warm. Hiding is a temporary solution.”

  Stu bit back on a curse as he snarled, “So we fight and die. That’s your plan?”

  Jillybean looked down at her small hands as if she could find the answers they desperately needed in its creases. “So far that’s all I have. I have my tricks which will help and if we all band together that will help more, but…” There was nothing else to add—the hard truth was that in the end, they would fight and they would die.

  She was sure the Corsairs wouldn’t come blundering in dumb this time. They would come during the day; they’d come in slow and carefully and they’d be on the lookout for the dead. Jillybean was sure they’d come with thousands of men and with their hundreds of boats they would be able to swarm in every direction.

  All of this presented a considerable military conundrum. It was a puzzle that was currently unsolvable, despite her unequalled intellect. She had studied the situation from every angle, always coming up against the hard truth that she would be facing a force that would likely outnumber hers six to one. They were better armed and with a clear advantage in mobility.

  That mobility would make the classic tactics of using guerrilla warfare impossible. How does one win using a hit and run strategy when your enemy can hit harder and run faster?

  She had studied maps of the bay, seeing a dozen places where she could arrange to cutoff and trap large numbers of boats. But each time she saw how easily her small army could be flanked, pinned in place and completely destroyed.

  Yes, she would have deception and surprise on her side, but these would only stave off a disastrous defeat for only so long.

  All four had been silent for the last minute. Mike broke the silence by slapping his thigh and declaring, “Alcatraz is our only hope. It’s the only place where we have a chance of defending ourselves.” He snapped his fingers, excitedly. “You know what? We have more than just a chance! With the Hill People, the Islanders and all of the warehouse people put together, we’d have more than enough people to fight them off. Our walls aren’t all that high but they’re thick enough to stop bullets. We can win.”

  He was so excited that Jillybean didn’t want to tell him exactly how wrong he was. She sighed and her shoulders slumped as she was about to tell him where he’d made his mistake in logic, but before she could, Mike barked, “You don’t know everything! The Corsairs don’t stand a chance if they attack us.”

  “They wouldn’t need to attack us,” Stu said, seeing at least some of the problems Jillybean had been wrestling with. “They could just surround us and wait until we run out of food.”

  “Actually, it’ll be the water that goes first,” Jillybean corrected. “Unless the stores of fresh water on the island are far greater than I suspect, we’ll be dry in three or four days. Unless of course the Corsairs take a few shots at the water tower, then it’ll be quicker than that. It’s what I would do.”

  Mike, his face red and alive with anger, leapt up and took a quick turn around the cabin. “Why are we just hearing about this? If you’re so smart why’d you wait until now? Huh?” Echoing Stu’s words, he demanded, “Why’d you wait to tell anyone until it was too late to do anything about it?”

  Jillybean’s eyes darted quickly away.

  I know why, Eve said, coming up out of the gloom of her soul. Can I tell ‘em? Please? Let me break it to them for you. I’ll be gentle, I promise. Of course, how can I be gentle when the answer is that you ain’t nothing like they think. You ain’t no good guy. You are way more eviler than me, miss thinkin’ three steps ahead.

  Chapter 33

  “Shut up!” Jillybean hissed savagely.

  At first Mike’s anger flared, then he realized that the she was talking to herself and he became embarrassed for her. Still, he stood his ground, waiting for an answer.

  Gradually, Jillybean was able to overcome Eve. She did not win outright and wasn’t able to shove her down in the black with the other gibbering voices, but she came close, and managed to retain enough of herself to answer in a small voice.

  “My great conceit is exposed at last. I wish I knew everything. I wish, maybe, like Jenn, I could see the future. But this only came to me, uh lately. A few days ago, when we were first on the boat. It’s a Corsair boat and I got to thinking how long it would take for them to get back to Grays Harbor and that led to the idea that they might want to come back. Then I slowly became convinced that they would definitely come back. I hope I’m wrong about that, as well.”

  Stu blew out through his nose like a bull, but he wasn’t mad at her, he was mad at the Corsairs. “You’re not wrong.” After a quick glance at Jenn, who was shaking her head, he said, “They know we’re here and they’re probably pissed off at what happened. And we all know what the Corsairs are like when they’re pissed off. They’re going to want their revenge. I should have seen it, too.”

  Jenn was tucked away in a corner of the cabin, shivering as if it were much colder than it was. Jillybean had lied with only the slightest hiccup of morality when she had said, “uh.” Everything else had been a purposeful deception.

  There was no mystical sign telling her this—it was simply a fact in her mind and she couldn’t understand how no one was calling her out on it.

  “One way or the other,” Jillybean went on suddenly, her voice somewhat brassy and loud, “whether we knew three days ago or three weeks ago, our position is still precarious and we need to do all we can with the time we have left. I need more batteries, more explosives and more smoke bombs.”

  Mike touched the thin wall of his beloved Saber, saying, “Bombs? No way. Not here. You can make them on the barge.”

  Eve seemed to have been lurking for just this moment and she flashed into existence, turning Jillybean beautifully ugly. “I’ll make them anywhere I damned please,” she hissed. In seething hatred, she glared around the room until her eyes fell on Stu. “Ooh, it’s the rapist. Did she tell you yet, how long she has known about the Corsairs?”

  Stu knocked some of the dark triumph from her face by answering, “Yes, she did.”

  “Okay then. Did she tell you about the shipwrecked Corsair she caught and tortured for information?” A second honest “yes” from Stu had her steaming.

  Mike was too tired to deal with her and said, “You’re being a nuisance. Why don’t you go away?”

  “Why don’t you?” she spat back.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, okay I will,” he said, inadvertently wounding Eve with his indifference more than he could have with any uttered word. She sputtered as he turned to Jenn and held out a hand. “Do you want to come with me to check the anchor? I just don’t trust that darn thing.”

  Jenn thought that anything would be better than being stuck in the same room with Eve. Was she the reason why Jillybean wasn’t being completely honest? And why she hadn’t said anything before? Maybe, Jenn thought as she followed Mike up onto the deck where a sharp chill to the air had her pulling her coat tight as a second thought came to her: Eve was either the reason or the excuse.

  This struck Jenn as amazingly astute. So much so that she marveled over herself as Mike drew on a rope that ran from the Saber to the barge. He pulled the sailboat close and then held it there for Jenn to step lightly, coltishly from one to the other.

  She wanted to ask Mi
ke what he thought of her idea but then worried it would come across as bragging that she had thought of something really smart and he hadn’t. Besides, she didn’t have an answer to her own question and she suddenly deflated.

  The long barge with its shadowed clunky outlines was filled with quiet conversations and the crackle of fires as more soup was being heated on the deck near the front ramp. In the back, just a few feet away, sat the water pumping contraption making a whirring noise as it drew water from a hose that ran fifty feet through a stiff PVC pipe out to the “clean” side of the river. The filtered water ran up to the top of the far right containers, where tents with makeshift toilets and showers were set. From these, long “black water” pipes jutted far outward, extending down into the water where the current was fastest.

  The other containers were topped by heavy plastic storage boxes, each lashed down. This was where the food, firewood, weapons and ammunition were kept.

  By all appearances, the barge was already functioning with a high degree of precision. Each of the twenty containers held twelve people, and from these a container “captain” had been chosen. Their job was to adjudicate minor squabbles, set watch schedules and ensure that their container was in a proper state of cleanliness.

  Although they were crammed in such close quarters, everyone was too tired to squabble. Many barely had the energy to eat, however eating had been a direct order from the Queen and the captains made sure their people ate at least one full bowl of soup.

  While Mike checked the anchor, Jenn stood on the back ramp somewhat in awe of the barge and how quickly Jillybean had been able to make it into a floating home for two hundred and forty people. They could conceivably live on it permanently.

  They had easy access to fresh water, there were plenty of fish leaping here and there, and Jillybean had even mused earlier about the possibility of adding lights with something called hydroelectricity. They were also completely safe from the zombie menace. The barge rode very high on the water and so far, not a single zombie had come close to reaching the edge.