GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  She was contemplating all of this when Mike came up behind her, thought about putting his arms around her but then decided against it, fearing it would be too forward of him. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Not really.” Even before Jillybean’s lie, she’d had a low-running anxiety coursing through her like a dirty current. She kept telling herself that the Corsairs might not come until spring or they might not come at all, but she didn’t believe either of these lies.

  “It’s the Corsairs and Jillybean. I don’t think she’s telling us the whole truth.”

  Jenn was surprised when he took Jillybean’s side. “Maybe, she doesn’t know the whole truth. She is crazy and she has been dealing with a lot, like banishment and fires and being all yellow and sick. And we still don’t know if they’re even coming. Right now it’s just a guess.”

  “I think it’s a fact and so does she, but I guess we’ll find out tomorrow how things stand…if we can steer this thing.” It was the wrong thing to say. He blamed himself for the problem with the barge and she could sense him stiffen next to her. She melted into him, putting her arms around him, her breath a delightful mist upon the bracing air. The barge and its steering problems faded.

  “Yeah, we’ll worry about all that tomorrow.” He hugged her back and although it was somewhat romantic being out on the river, the proximity of so many people made them both feel watched. Pulling on the rope, he summoned the Saber once more, where they were both keenly aware of the intense quiet when they got to the cabin.

  Mike went in first and saw Stu making the batteries, his rugged face screwed up in concentration—Jillybean had gone over the formula with what he felt had been unnecessary haste. She was on one of the couches scribbling away in perfect happiness. Jenn could see numbers and symbols and maybe a drawing.

  “How’d you get her back?” Mike asked.

  Stu didn’t look up. “I said to Eve that if she was as smart as Jillybean, she could easily figure out how to fix the barge so it’ll go straight. She didn’t last a minute.”

  “I’m not fixing the barge exactly,” Jillybean said, without looking up. “A real rudder could never be properly joined, except in a dry dock which we may eventually counterfeit if we find a place where the difference between high and low tides is particularly pronounced. In the meantime, we will use underwater drag chutes in lieu of a rudder. Four should suffice, one on each corner and two at the quarter marks.”

  A blank silence pervaded the room and finally Jillybean looked up to see their confused faces. “It’s like this: something is acting on the barge causing it to spin on its main axis away from center. The drag chutes will counter this, I hope. For example, if the barge spins to the left, we let out a chute on the right. The difficult part is deciding the size of the chutes and the materials needed.”

  Without further explanation she went right back to work, ignoring them as if they were no longer in the room.

  “Might as well lend me a hand,” Stu said.

  Mike plopped down heavily as Stu started going over the process of battery making, purposely leaving out the useless science words that Jillybean had used. He really didn’t care what electrolytes, chemical mediums, cathodes and anodes were. All he cared about was making the flashlights go on and off.

  Jenn did not sit. She stood in the middle of the cabin, conspicuously doing nothing. She was trying to decide what to do about the fact that Jillybean had deliberately kept something from them; something that could very well lead to their deaths.

  Stu cast an eye at Jenn every few seconds, letting loose with the tiniest of sighs here and there. He understood why Jenn was upset and in truth, he was worried about Jillybean as well, and he did think she had been in the absolute wrong for not telling them earlier about the Corsairs, but—and it was a tremendous but—there was no denying he was so overdosed with love that he felt practically drunk at times.

  Outwardly, he was his usual gimlet-eyed, hard as nails self, but inwardly, he just couldn’t stay angry at Jillybean. In all honesty, he didn’t know if she could do anything that he couldn’t get over.

  Mike was clearly over the situation as well. To him it was just how Jillybean was. She was crazy and crazy people did crazy things. He didn’t like it and frequently he didn’t like her, but as long as she was still more of a benefit than a detriment, he had long ago decided it was best to just try to get along with her.

  Additionally, he was so caught up in the idea of the drag chutes that he didn’t much care about the timing of a lie. Every now and then while he worked, he would stop injecting new acid into the old batteries, and hold one of his hands out, palm down, turning it this way and that, his eyes partially closed as he imagined the barge and the action of the underwater chutes.

  Jenn, despite her friendship with Jillybean, could not let it go. “Jillybean,” she said, sharply enough to make everyone look up. “I have to know the truth. Is there any other secret you’re keeping from us? The past is the past and you were very wrong about not telling us earlier, but now I’m worried about the future. Is there anything you’re not telling us about the future?”

  “No,” she said without batting an eye. “As far as I know the Corsairs are coming, after that I don’t know. We will fight and chances are most of us will die.”

  She wasn’t lying and a large part of Jenn couldn’t help feeling a desperate disappointment. “We should go over every detail and every choice left to us just to make sure we aren’t missing anything.”

  “I’ve already tracked the course of every plausible scenario and there is no outcome that…”

  “Well, I haven’t,” Jenn snapped. She regretted it immediately. “Sorry, I’m just scared. Can we talk it over?”

  Jillybean’s eyes had gone dark, but the sincere apology kept Eve at bay at least for the moment. “Sure, as long as we work and talk at the same time. I’ll make the pipe bombs if you’ll work on the smoke generators.” She knew that calling them smoke bombs would only make Jenn skittish and slow.

  “It’ll be easy,” she added, as Jenn became alarmed. “Just think of it as a pie.”

  “The math kind?” Jenn asked, hoping to God that it wasn’t.

  “No, the eating kind. And like any pie, you need ingredients. We have potassium chlorate to act as an oxidizer, sugar or in this case malted barley, which is the fuel for the bomb.” Jenn stepped back in alarm. “I mean the generator,” Jillybean added quickly. “And we can’t forget the sodium bicarbonate, which most people call baking soda. The bicarbonate is used to moderate the rate of the reaction and to keep it from getting too hot.”

  Jenn forgot all about the lie. She watched Jillybean gather the frightening ingredients with a dread certainty that she would find a way to mix them into an actual bomb and not a “smoke generator” whatever that was.

  Jillybean calmly assembled the first “generator” making it look so simple that Jenn thought it was something she could handle. After she had done her first, things went quicker. “How many do you want?”

  “A hundred? A thousand?” Jillybean’s smile dimmed as she thought about how weak her people were. All the smoke in the world wouldn’t turn them into warriors. The bombs she had started on weren’t going to turn the tide either. She could maybe add another ten to the eleven she already had on hand.

  Unfortunately, she had no way to propel them at the enemy. Sure, she could set up a rather large slingshot or use a simple catapult, but the timing with regard to the detonation would have to be utterly perfect to have any effect. And what would twenty-one bombs do against hundreds of ships?

  Not much.

  They talked about the pros and cons of hiding or trying to run. It was all mostly cons however. The only pro, the delaying of the inevitable capture-torture-rape-death sequence that all of them could look forward to, was more of a mitigated con than a real positive.

  Direct battle was only better in that it would get everything over with much faster. “I’d rather go down swinging anyway,” Mike said,
forgetting that he had advocated running for it not long before. “And they’re not going to get their hands on the Saber! Everyone must promise me that whoever is the last alive will burn her or blow her up.”

  They promised and went back to work. Their conversation died away as the hours slipped towards midnight. After completing each battery, Mike would reach over and casually brush Jenn’s hand. They would look at each other and smile. Somehow this made things alright. Or at least, alright enough for them to continue working until they were all too tired to go on.

  In the morning after barely six hours of sleep, Jillybean was up and fully charged. She threw herself into the work of creating the drag chutes. They were simply inch-thick chains wound through a double sheet of canvas with stiffly reinforced eyeholes. The chutes weren’t designed to absorb the weight of the barge, but only to add force in opposition to any spin that might arise.

  It took two hours to accomplish this and during that time, Jillybean was everywhere, perfecting this bit of the barge, or inspecting her patients. Only four of them still needed IVs. Amazingly Rebecca Haigh was one of those who didn’t.

  When Jillybean unhooked the IV, the girl stood with great difficulty, her emaciated legs shaking beneath her. She looked as if she was about to fall. Jenn and Johanna jumped to catch her, but she pushed them gently away and bent at the waist in an ungainly bow.

  “Sorry. I know I’m supposed to curtsey, but I can’t just yet.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Jillybean said.

  Miss Rebecca shook her head. “Not maybe and not just tomorrow. You saved me when no one else could have. I’ll always curtsey and you will always be my Queen.”

  Visibly shaken, Jillybean nodded and left the sickbay with quietly murmured excuses. Once outside it was her turn to look like she might faint. When Jenn asked what was wrong, Jillybean pulled her away. “I nearly let her go. You know, like that boy.”

  Jenn remembered the boy; she would never forget that horror. “But you didn’t. You saved her. You’re still a good person, no matter what.”

  Jillybean let out a high shriek of laughter and walked away, her head shaking. She was in a touchy mood until they got the chutes rigged and manned. When Mike pulled away in the Saber with Jenn on board, they were both convinced that they’d be able to hear Eve from across the river if the barge didn’t ride true.

  With the wind right on their back quarter, Mike tied off the Saber with fifty-foot lines. It didn’t leave him any room to maneuver if things went bad, but thankfully the chutes worked like a charm. They had to be watched closely, and the teamwork between the crew of the Saber and the barge had to be fairly exact for them to keep to the center of the river.

  The wind was steady from the northwest but, as the river swung back and forth running as straight as a snake’s back, it was a struggle to keep things lined up. Luckily the river was wider and deeper than it had ever been before the apocalypse. Dams had failed and water-stealing canals had long ago filled with silt.

  The current swept them along at about four miles an hour and the wind added another four, though this came and went, sometimes stronger, sometimes weak as a child’s breath.

  It was thirteen hours of running the chutes in and out and bleeding the wind for all the Saber was worth before they crawled out into San Pablo Bay, a wide stretch of water that was really just the northern extension of San Francisco Bay.

  Here they lost most of their current while at the same time they picked up a healthy breeze. With so much room, Mike lengthened his cables and let out all the sail he could so there was a white froth at the Saber’s keel.

  The sun had long since set and yet there was still a glow in the north where the fire Eve had lit still raged. It was too dark to see the destruction she had wrought from one edge of the Golden Gate all the way to Napa. Four hundred square miles had been turned to cinder.

  James Smith, the ex-slave, had been given command of the Floating Fortress as Jillybean had christened the barge, and now asked in his deep rumble, “Where do we park?”

  Jillybean hadn’t smiled much that day, but now she grinned. “Where do we anchor might be the correct question. The answer is here. Make sure the anchor doesn’t slip. While I’m away, you will be in charge.”

  He bowed before asking, “Where are you going?”

  “The scene of the crime, of course. Well, one of my crimes, I should say.”

  Chapter 34

  Jillybean had not spent her day worrying over the sailing of the boat or the activity of the chutes she designed. Once she saw that James and Mike were acting in proper coordination, she went to work on the detonators, radios and a half-dozen other minor items.

  By mid-afternoon she had done all she could to prepare for the coming battle, as far as she could, that is without complete information on the enemy, potential allies and seeing possible battle sites with her own eyes. To everyone’s great surprise she napped most of the afternoon away. She wanted to be fresh because once they cast off from the Floating Fortress she expected to take over piloting the Saber.

  Mike wouldn’t hear of it. As exhausted as he was from the long stressful day he still insisted on remaining at the wheel. “I know these waters,” he explained. “I know their dangers better than anyone. I know where the shallows are and the shoals. Even in the dark, I know which shores will suck us in and dash us to pieces.”

  He was loud and, as always when it came to sailing, somewhat pompous. Again, it was a surprise that Jillybean said nothing. She deferred to his greater knowledge and settled in next to Stu, the hood of a heavy black coat thrown over her head to keep out the chill wind.

  As close as he was to her, Stu was not fooled. He saw her watching Mike as they glided silently across the water.

  This part of the trip was uneventful and soon enough he yawned, and this was followed by more until Mike said, “Maybe I could lay down for a couple of hours, but keep to the center of the bay.” Before slipping away, he spent five minutes detailing the many dangers of the seven-mile wide neck of water that connected the two bays. “And I’ll be right in the cabin if you need anything. So, don’t hesitate. Oh, and she has a tendency to fall off if you don’t keep the main stiff as a board…”

  Jillybean only nodded over and over until he finally went below with Jenn.

  “He’ll make a great mom someday,” Stu joked.

  “I feel bad for Jenn. She has to share him with a boat of all things.”

  Stu snorted, “I have to share you with algebra and synthetic chemical reactions, but you don’t hear me complain.”

  A soft laugh, barely heard above the passing wind, escaped her and she squirmed in closer to him, keeping one foot up on the wheel. Mike would have had a fit if he saw how complacent they both were. With miles of sea room and a calm steady breeze out of the west-northwest, there was little danger as far as sailing was concerned.

  The danger, and the reason they were riding southwest, lay in the possibility that the Corsairs had returned to Grays Harbor and outfitted themselves faster than logic and human nature suggested. The wind had been against the Corsairs both coming and going, and yet if they had thrown together a few blankets, a little ammo and barely enough food, it was conceivable that the four of them would find San Francisco Bay crowded with black boats.

  After three hours of the smoothest sailing Stu had ever witnessed, they crossed between the Belvedere Peninsula and Angel Island, where the wind slackened the slightest bit. Even in the deepest sleep, Mike sensed the change and was instantly awake and on deck seconds later.

  He gazed out at the black hump of land and then at the stars and, finally at the sorry state of the Saber’s sails. Fixing an obviously fake grin in place, he said, “How about I take over for a little bit. I bet you’re both tired.”

  They really weren’t. They had spent the time snuggled up to each other, talking quietly at times, but more often than not, enjoying the serenity of the night.

  “It’s killing you isn’t it?” Jillybean asked
.

  “No, no of course not,” Mike answered, feeling his chest tighten and his throat close. “It’s just, you know, you have the boom thrown too far forward and look at these knots. They’re…they’re really a good try. And…” He saw what could only be dirt on the wheel and was that part of a shoe print?

  The smile faltered.

  “I was trying to keep us going as straight southwest as we could go,” she said, pointing purposefully west. He cast an alarmed eye in the direction she was pointing and then turned quickly to look up at the North Star, creases cutting across his brow. Jillybean hid a smile behind her hand as she went on, “And we couldn’t get the anchor all the way up. It’s been dragging a bit and knocking on something.”

  “What?” His face took on a stricken look as though the news had afflicted him with a deadly disease. He hurried to the anchor line.

  Jillybean burst out in high laughter which only grew as Mike pulled on the anchor line and found it as tight as ever.

  “We’ll let you take over, Captain Mike,” Stu said, pulling Jillybean over to the bench. The very idea of torturing him, even in this small way was darkening her eyes and turning her smile cold instead of happy.

  “What’s this about the anchor?” Jenn came up out of the cabin, her hair in nearly as explosive of a state as Jillybean’s. “Is there something wrong with it?”

  Mike retied the rope holding it, just in case. “No. They’re just poking fun.” He hoped. To make sure, he set Jenn holding the wheel exactly on a southwest course, and went about the Saber checking everything, causing Jillybean to giggle uncontrollably.

  She sobered quickly as they came closer to Pelican Harbor and the charred remains of Sausalito. The hill looked darker than it should have as they tacked into the wind. The maneuver was made without a single snap of a sail. They were as silent as the night and the only sound were the buoy bells.