GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  George Parry took the Puffer across the bay to the hilltop. He was gone for four hours, a strangely long time and if Stu had been awake, he would have been both furious and nervous—furious, thinking that the Coven was already playing games and nervous because it was conceivable the Corsairs could have already landed on the Pacific side of the peninsula and were even then carrying away prisoners from the hilltop.

  Stu slept the four hours away in blissful ignorance while sitting on a reclining chair, his head thrown back and snoring, making a sound somewhat reminiscent of six men sawing logs.

  Jillybean slept deeply and silently. The moment the sun cracked the eastern horizon, she opened one eye to make sure she was alone and safe. When she sat up, she felt a moment of serenity. It was just long enough to take an easy breath before the full weight of the stress she had voluntarily taken on her shoulders came crushing down. With it came Eve’s relentless attacks.

  You’re going to kill us all! Buoys? Chunks of rocks, a few chains and some rope? You can’t fight an army with a bunch of crap like this. THEY ARE THE CORSAIRS, DAMN IT! Your ‘people’ are pussies and we both know they’re going to cut and run at the first volley. They’ll leave us high and dry and then…

  “Stop,” Jillybean hissed. “I know what I’m doing.” Only she didn’t, not completely, at least. She understood warfare probably better than anyone left alive, and that included quite a number of men who had been American soldiers. These men had trained with the most sophisticated command and control system ever conceived, and they had used weapons that allowed them to destroy their enemies from so far away there was no reason to wait until the whites of anyone’s eyes could be seen.

  Yes, there were some still alive who had been part of tactical teams that could clear a village or breach a building. This did not make them military geniuses nor did it give them the same insights into the human psyche that Jillybean possessed.

  She knew people and she knew history. Along with her other pursuits, she had studied war—not the wars of the twentieth century, where logistics and massed firepower played more of a role than the individual soldier, but the small wars and battles, especially those of antiquity since the barbarism and lack of technology so closely paralleled theirs.

  But you don’t know jack about boats, do you? Eve demanded, cutting in on her thoughts like a braying donkey. I know it. I can see whenever there’s a gaping hole in your vast super-duper intellect. It’s like a great sucking blackness and when you…

  “Shut up!”

  Why? Because you’re afraid of the truth? You don’t know jack when it comes to naval warfare, and what do you got looking you dead in the eye? A naval battle!

  “Shut-up!”

  They got at least two hundred boats with the best sailors in the world and what do you have?

  Before she could spit out a retort, there came a knock on William’s bedroom door. Stu let himself in, the worry obvious in his eyes. He didn’t need to ask if there was something wrong.

  “I need my pills,” Jillybean said, feeling the ugly ache of addiction. She hungered for something to drown out Eve’s incessant voice. Even though she knew the danger, she begged, “I just need one or two and only for a little while. Maybe just for a few days.”

  She seemed to be asking Stu for permission. “I don’t know,” he said, quietly, not sure what was the right thing to do. “You’ve been doing great without them. You know, except for a few little outbursts and those were manageable.” He was about to go on when there came a shout from the direction of the dock. It was taken up by a hundred voices.

  “The Fortress is here!” William cried, from just outside the door. This wasn’t exactly true. It was still a mile out and Mike had not yet freed the Saber from her giant wallowing stepchild. The barge seemed immense to the Islanders. It was too far away for the rust to be visible and to them it looked like a great block of impervious steel.

  The cheers were enough to drown out Eve, sending her muttering into a corner of Jillybean’s mind. “We should go see Gerry,” Jillybean said, heading straight out of the ugly, cold concrete building where a third of the Islanders lived in what were almost cells.

  They found him in the guard tower with a pair of binoculars propped up to his eyes. “What are the tents and the pipes for on top of the containers?”

  “We have running water aboard. There are toilets and showers within the tents.” She hoped she didn’t have to explain the obvious use of the outflow pipes. “If I decide to keep her, I’ll put in a coal-fired steam engine which will give her propulsion, electricity, and of course, heat.”

  As he had binoculars and could see the rust and the scrawled graffiti on the side of some of the containers, Gerry wasn’t exactly impressed by the barge itself. However, the idea of running water by itself was shocking enough—but an engine on top of that?

  “Huh,” he grunted. “That’s pretty cool…if you can do it.”

  Stu glared and was about to tell him about the electric motor she had made when he spotted the Puffer zip along the starboard side of the Floating Fortress.

  “It’s about time,” Gerry said, and turned for the ladder. “We’ll go to my office. Don’t be surprised if they start throwing around a lot of voodoo mumbo jumbo talk. It’s what they do when they’re confused.” He was five rungs down when he stopped and peered upwards. “Hey, speaking of which, has Jenn seen anything?”

  Jillybean didn’t answer. The dark child inside of her had started in again with her nasty, angry diatribe and Jillybean was having trouble even focusing on the rungs.

  “Yeah, she did,” Stu answered. “If it had been anyone else, I could have laughed it off. But with her…it’s creepy.”

  “Was it bad? What did she see?”

  Stu shrugged. “I didn’t want to know. We can ask her when she gets here.” He gestured out at the bay where the Saber was slowly pulling away from the Floating Fortress. “What is Mike doing?”

  Jillybean turned her lamp-like eyes towards the barge as it slowly drifted westward with the tide and the current. She felt a stab of panic and ran for the binoculars, thrust them to her face and scanned out to the ocean, expecting to see the Corsairs, but the water was empty.

  “It’s Jenn,” she said, relieved. “Mike would never leave a boat to drift without a reason. She’s seen something new, no doubt.”

  Far from being reassured, Stu and Gerry, the two biggest skeptics of mystical powers, shared a nervous look. They both had to push aside the desire to wait on the wall like most of the population of the Island was doing. The Puffer had docked and the five Coven members were stumping up towards them.

  Four of the five looked grave while the fifth, Miss Shay, glared around her until she caught sight of Jillybean. “Murderer!” she charged in a full-throated shrill scream. This shocked the crowd into silence and when Miss Shay carried on, “She killed One Shot Saul. Arrest her! Arrest her at once!” Jenn could hear it across the nearly still waters of the bay.

  “She’s going to turn, Mike. She’s going to become Eve and then we’ll all die.” She was so utterly sure of this that she considered slipping into the water and kicking with her feet to get them moving faster.

  Mike let out every inch of sail he could and strained the Saber back and forth, fighting to steal any stray breath of air. They crawled to the dock and as worried as Jenn was for Jillybean, Mike was equally so for the Floating Fortress. It was steadily heading out towards the ocean. They had let out the anchor but only had a hundred feet of rope for it, and now they were above a channel that was close on three hundred feet deep.

  “I won’t be able to stay,” he told her. He would have to turn right around and pray that he could catch a breeze or two because once the barge got beyond the Golden Gate Bridge he didn’t know if the Saber would be able to get her back, especially if the wind went in any direction save for due west.

  Jenn would be on her own, dealing with the Coven and likely Eve as well—the idea of going into that alone made her
blood run cold. Then a thought struck her: What would Jillybean do? The answer to this one was rather simple: She’d do something crazy. Hadn’t she already done something crazy in a similar situation?

  With a wild grin, she squeezed Mike’s arm and ran below, coming back in a second with one of Jillybean’s pipe bombs cradled in the crook of her arm like a football. “It’s a negotiating tool,” she told him. He had already been shocked by the sight of the bomb, but now his mouth came open. She laughed at him, and with the bomb in her hand, she suddenly felt as crazy as Jillybean.

  This temporary insanity had a freeing effect on her and before she could stop herself she bent and kissed him on the lips. It was short and sweet and when she broke away, Mike looked even more shocked than he had a second before.

  “Oooooh,” the crowd at the now close dock said. Some cheered and some clapped and many moved in to help Jenn off the boat. She didn’t need help, and after a quick goodbye, she leapt down to the dock a second before the Saber touched.

  “Push me off!” Mike ordered, in a captain’s roar. The Saber was pushed away from the dock by twenty eager hands and soon he was picking up a slight wind. It was so slight a wind that it barely fluffed his hair. Jenn looked back at exactly the same moment that Mike had and they shared a fleeting moment before she had to turn away.

  “Where’s the Greek?” she demanded, as she ran.

  “The Admin Building, second floor,” George yelled after her.

  It took only a minute to get there and she heard Miss Shay’s voice echoing the moment she stepped into the old building. The lower levels had wide windows and the lobby was full of morning light from one end to the other. The stairs up were another story; there was no light save for what bounced from the gleaming floor in the lobby.

  The eight people in the room were arrayed around a long table: the Coven were on one side, Stu and Jillybean, or rather Eve, on the other. Gerry leaned against one wall, neither on one side or the other.

  Stu had his hands full. Miss Shay, Melody Rickman and Tammy Easterling were taking turns hissing things like “Wicked girl!” and “Why do we even listen to a murderer?” and “Hanging’s too good for her.”

  In between these outbursts, Donna and Lois, both looking worried, sad and outraged, all at once, were peppering Eve with questions: “How do you know the Corsairs are coming? Why did you start a forest fire? Tell us again, why we shouldn’t run?”

  Finally, there was Eve looking black-eyed and hate filled, while at the same time, smiling with the evilest, most loathsome smile Jenn had ever seen. Go on, keep jabbering away, the smile said, You’ll get yours from the Corsairs soon enough and I can’t wait.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Jenn said, breezing in and speaking so loudly that she cut off Melody in the middle of another snide remark. “Since everyone here seems just about equally confused, I’m sure I didn’t miss anything.” She deliberately shut and locked the door. It was symbolic since any one of them could have turned the knob and walked out, though when she placed the bomb down right in front of Eve, the lock didn’t feel nearly as symbolic.

  “Do you think that is supposed to scare us?” Donna said, her voice remarkably calm. She knew Jenn Lockhart and she wasn’t afraid of Jenn Lockhart.

  Jenn held up a finger and then produced the detonator, noting the glee in Eve’s eyes. “I don’t see why you would be. If you aren’t afraid of the Corsairs, then why would a bomb frighten you?”

  Lois cleared her throat, which had constricted measurably. “The Corsairs are a hypothetical threat coming from people who have a lot to gain by throwing us all into a wild state of panic. You don’t have a shred of evidence suggesting they are coming at all.”

  “And that could be just a pipe with some tape and wires on it,” Jenn countered. “Who here thinks I should give this detonator to Eve?” The only hand that shot up was Eve’s, and it did so with such voracious zeal it half lifted the girl out of her seat.

  “Jenn, a bomb has no place at these proceedings,” Donna said.

  “Actually, it does. It is a time bomb of sorts. If Eve can write down the first six digits of pi in order before we come to an agreement then, I will give her the detonator. Starting now.” She slid over a piece of paper and a pencil and Eve started scribbling down numbers like mad.

  “You didn’t say I had to figure out pi,” Eve laughed in triumph. “You just said I had to write the numbers down. I just have to write down every…what’s the word? Never mind. Don’t say it, Jillybean! Just shut up and let me write.”

  Jenn went to stand behind Eve as she scribbled and was secretly alarmed at how fast she was flying through the numbers. Eve knew the first three were 3.14 so all she had to do was add 159 behind it, and as she had started with 001 she wasn’t all that far off.

  “You aren’t going to give it to her,” Miss Shay said. “I’ve known you since you were a little runt. You won’t do it. And if you do, there probably aren’t batteries in that thing.”

  To prove her wrong, Jenn armed the detonator and showed them the glow of the LED light. She then put it on the table just out of Eve’s reach, holding it there with a single finger.

  “The Corsairs are coming,” Jenn said. “I’ve seen the signs and they can’t be missed. But let’s look at this logically. We took just one of their boats and they chased us for three days and nights with a fleet of eighty-two ships and they attacked the complex without a thought. That’s who they are. That’s who they’ve always been and we all know it!”

  She slammed the flat of her hand down on the table. “You can pretend all you want, but the Corsairs have not changed. They know where we are and they know how weak we are. They are coming. It’s just a matter of when.”

  Miss Shay looked as though she were about to make a biting comment when Donna stopped her. She breathed out in a long sigh that was all age instead of weariness. “No. She may be right. I had hoped that since we’re so small the Corsairs wouldn’t care about us. I hoped we would be safe, but I don’t think we are.”

  “Then we run or hide,” Melody said. “It’s a big city we could hide anywhere.”

  Jenn explained why hiding was a poor idea and how running was worse, especially for them. “You’ll be running into a desert of ash that stretches for forty miles.”

  “A desert that she made!” Miss Shay snapped, pointing a spear of a finger at Eve. “I can never have her as my Queen, and I can never trust a liar like you, Jenn.”

  For nine years Jenn had been scared to death of the Coven and Miss Shay in particular. Holding that detonator, seeing her own signs and surviving adventure after adventure, had changed a great deal about Jenn. Although many things still scared her silly, Miss Shay was not one of them.

  Jenn appeared completely unmoved by Miss Shay’s latest outburst, mainly because deep down Jenn couldn’t care less what she thought. “You don’t have to accept her. It’s entirely up to you. Of course, if you don’t, you won’t have the Queen’s…” She searched for a word that was just on the tip of her tongue.

  “Protection,” Eve said, absently.

  “Yes, that’s the word.” Jenn had to hide a smile. In her concentration, Eve was slowly slipping away. “If you don’t accept her, then you will be asked to leave her kingdom. The same goes for all seventy of you. We will be stronger with you…”

  Eve cut in, whispering, “I did it!” Her eyes were tremendously wide and unblinking as she gazed happily down at the paper. At the top of one column of numbers was 3.14001 and at the bottom of another was 3.14159. “That’s pi! I know it. And you said if I could write down pi I could have the bomb, so give it over.”

  Now Jenn had to fake the same smile she had been just trying to hide. “As for being a liar, I think this proves that I’m not one.” With her pointer finger still planted on the detonator, she started sliding it over to Eve, whose eyes were wide and greedy for it. Everyone else, including Stu, silently begging Jenn not to give up control of the bomb.

  At the last moment, Jenn pa
used. “Are you sure? I’m not the best math person in the world and 3.14159 does sound familiar. Is there a way to check to see if it is right? You know like some sort of, uh number problem? Like adding or the timeses? What did you tell me in that tunnel back in Bainbridge? You said pi had to do with something about the ratio of a circle’s, uh roundness…”

  “Roundness?” This had Eve blinking. “It’s not its roundness, it’s circumference. That’s what pi is.” Although the words had come out soft, but certain, she herself looked far from certain about anything. She seemed quite unsure of herself.

  “Okay, its circumference,” Jenn said, helping the transition along. “And what is that again?”

  A wave of confusion swept Eve as she put her hands together in a hollow approximation of a ball. “It’s the way around, no it’s the distance around a circle. And the number pi is a mathematical constant, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, commonly approximated as 3.14159.”

  “That sounds about right,” Jenn said. She then slid the detonator across to her as the Coven gasped. “This belongs to you, your Highness.”

  Jillybean was still awash in a haze of mathematics and hate; a most bizarre combination. She took the detonator, hiding her confusion. “Ah, thank you. I was wondering where I put that.”

  “I was just informing Miss Shay that anyone who does not accept your authority cannot stay in the bay area. It’s seems right that only the people who are working for the good of the Queen and her people be allowed to stay.”

  “Of course, it almost goes without saying,” Jillybean agreed. “Would any leader allow dissension to fester? No, they wouldn’t. Although execution would be considered a kindness for someone of Miss Shay’s advanced age and inadequate survival skills, I will allow for simple banishment if she would prefer.”

  Miss Shay was on the verge of hysteria, while the other members of the Coven couldn’t help themselves and shied away from her. “You’re crazy!” Miss Shay screeched.