GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  Jillybean grinned. “It’s probably why they call me the ‘Mad Queen.’ Crazy or not, I’m the only chance you have. The Corsairs are coming! It’s time to make your choice.” She stood imperiously, kicking back her chair. “Move the table,” she ordered, not speaking directly to anyone.

  Gerry and Stu were quick to haul it out of the way so that there was nothing between Jillybean and the Coven. “Take a knee. Swear fealty or choose between banishment or execution. Now!”

  Miss Shay made gasping sounds as though she were choking. She looked to Gerry, begging him with her eyes to do something. And he did. He moved around his end of the table and knelt before Jillybean.

  “You are my Queen and I swear my life and my honor to you…just don’t screw it up.”

  Jillybean put out her hand slowly appearing to give it to him to kiss, but just as he bent to kiss it, she slapped him on the cheek, playfully. “That’s for impertinence.” She put her hand out again. “I’ll be the first to hang if I screw things up, which is very good incentive not to.”

  He kissed her hand and then moved back to his end of the table, touching his cheek where she had slapped him.

  Without their customary table acting as a shield or buffer, the Coven looked weak and exposed, sitting there with their ankles crossed, hands fidgeting, and their faces lined in fear.

  Donna Polston was able to conquer her fear first and for a woman of forty-four in a world filled with Corsairs, zombies and mad queens, there was a lot to be afraid of. “I put my life in your hands,” she said, kneeling before Jillybean. “I’m trusting you to take care of it.”

  Jillybean only nodded but made no other move. Behind her, Jenn said, “I think you need to make the pledge like everyone else.”

  The one-time leader of the Coven drew up as straight as she could and made the pledge. She kissed Jillybean’s hand and then moved off in something of a daze. Lois came next, moving quickly and even managing a smile that wasn’t entirely faked. Being the youngest member of the Coven hadn’t been easy.

  Melody and Tammy followed after, each making their pledges with all the believability of highschool actors doing their school’s version of Romeo and Juliet. This left Miss Shay, who hesitated so long that Jillybean said, “Why you make your pledge, be it through self-preservation, peer-pressure, or abject fear, is less important to me than actually keeping the pledge itself.”

  It was permission to be a blatant hypocrite which Miss Shay took. When she kissed Jillybean’s hand, the Queen had to lock the muscles of her back and shoulders to keep the cold shiver from flowing right down her spine. She didn’t trust Miss Shay and had they been in any other predicament, she wouldn’t have let the woman within five feet of her.

  Pulling her hand back, Jillybean waited to wipe off that last cold kiss until after she had said, “Now we get to work!”

  Chapter 37

  With the eight of them waiting in varying degrees of eagerness to “get to work,” Jillybean went to the window and was surprised to see the Saber under a great press of sail bearing down on the Floating Fortress as it wallowed on a growing sea, heading straight for the great bastion of concrete that was the foundation of the southern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. The tower rose out of the water and carried on going over seven hundred feet straight up.

  The surprise was short-lived. Jenn’s presence accounted for the drama playing out in front of her. If the barge struck there was a good chance they would lose her and most of her people.

  Jillybean turned away; Mike’s sailing abilities were akin to her genius and she had full faith in him. Besides, she knew that if she even uttered a gasp, she would lose Jenn who would be so engrossed in worry as to be utterly useless.

  “My plan is very simple. We hit them very hard right off the bat and then make them pay every time they get close. I’m going to try to involve the Santas but if that doesn’t work out we have to do our best to deny them the southern part of the bay by positioning the Floating Fortress between Alcatraz and Treasure Island.”

  The plan had to be simple. On one hand she had a bunch of dull fishermen and on the other a few hundred sickly scavengers. If she tried to take them out of their tactical depth, which was shallow indeed, they would likely break and run.

  “I will need a minimum of twenty-five buoys and I’m not talking dinky mooring buoys. I need the large ones like that one out by Shag Rock. Thankfully, we won’t need anchors, but I’m going to need a good two miles of rope and another one of chain.”

  “Jeeze,” Gerry started to swear. He went on with a good deal of practiced profanity but it was all pretty much drowned out as Eve sang and laughed inside her, Ropes and floats and billy goats, Jilly is Queen of a bunch of dopes and now there ain’t no hopes.

  “Enough,” she said, speaking to the two of them. “This was one of the busiest harbors in America. There are docks and piers and boating equipment everywhere. There is even a Coast Guard presence on Treasure Island. Check there first.”

  She went to explain the first line of defense, which consisted of twenty-five buoys linked by rope stretching under the Golden Gate Bridge. “We’ll trap as many boats as we can against it. Our sharpshooters will take out as many officers as possible and the rest will hurl down rocks.”

  Donna and Lois shared an approving look. Throwing rocks from high up on a bridge where they could expect a certain amount of protection was their kind of warfare.

  “We’ll station a hundred people on the bridge,” Jillybean went on, only to pause as Donna held up her hand.

  “Why just a hundred? If we use more people, we could stop them cold right there and drive them away for good.”

  There was a map of the bay area on the wall behind Gerry’s desk. Jillybean went to it. “First, we can’t afford to put all of our eggs in one basket, defensively speaking that is. What if the rope proves easily broken? What if the Corsairs possess artillery or something similar? Unlikely sure, but what is more likely is that their ships will come straggling in and those in back are not going to come blundering up to be trapped.”

  She paused and pointed to the land on either side of the bridge. “Whether we have a hundred or five hundred men on the bridge, the Corsairs will come ashore here, and here, in an effort to trap us. It’s why a hundred is a good number. We will position our best troops to make a fight out of the expected landings, giving the people on the bridge time to take out all the boats they can. They will then move down the south end of the bridge to this side of the city, and hurry along the shore until they are opposite Treasure Island, where the smaller boats will ferry them across to take up defensive positions.”

  “And where will the Saber be?” Gerry asked, thinking he was being nonchalant in the way he had formed the question, when his eagerness for the ship was obvious to everyone.

  “That depends on the Santas. I don’t think we can expect the Saber to take part in this stage of the battle. From here the winds and tides will dictate the flow of the fighting. If the winds are against them, they’ll hold off, not wanting to tack back and forth with us shooting at them the entire time.”

  Donna took on a hopeful look. “Did you come with a lot of ammo?”

  Jillybean dashed all their hopes. She had come with only a little more than two thousand rounds, while Gerry had just about fifteen hundred and the Hill People only seven hundred.

  “And that’s one of the reasons why we band together,” Jillybean noted. “I am going to break you into work parties with each of you carrying out an assignment. If you can’t handle, it tell me now.” She began reciting from memory forty different tasks that had to be accomplished as soon as humanly possible.

  The only person to question their orders was Stu—he hadn’t been given any. Jenn at least was told to run ahead to tell everyone the news that they were now the loyal subjects of “The Queen.”

  “You’re with me,” she told Stu and marched straight out the door. “We have a delicate mission to attend to.” It was all she would say at l
east to him. Once outside, she paused to watch the Saber hauling the Floating Fortress back towards the island. She watched for all of two seconds before she began barking orders again. “You!”

  Mike’s friend George Parry touched his chest. “Me? My name’s George.”

  “Okay, George, I need you to get out to the Fortress. Take the smallest boat you have and tell Mike to pull it in close so we can unload the people. Just the people at first. Got it?”

  He started to answer but she had already turned away, rousing up a few loitering kids. She chose the two oldest. “Get pistols from the armory. You’ll be going to the hilltop by way of the bridge, and as you’ll be running, I’d wear sneakers.”

  “Running?”

  Stu wasn’t about to have a kid curl his lip at Jillybean, queen or not. He leapt at the boy and snatched him by his collar, yanking him close. “That’s the Queen you just sneered at, Jimmy. Is that how your mom taught you to behave?” The boy shook his head, afraid to look up. “Then what do you say?”

  “Sorry,” Jimmy said, in husky whisper.

  Being still so new to her title, Jillybean hadn’t even batted an eye at the lack of respect and was glad Stu had caught it. Gravely, she explained, “It’s actually ‘sorry, your Highness,’ but we’ll work on that later. Now, the Corsairs are coming and we need you to hurry. Find Donna Polston. She’ll have a note for you to take.”

  The next couple of hours were very similar. Jillybean formed teams to accomplish every conceivable task. When the Floating Fortress began unloading, with the Saber going back and forth packed to the gills, the number of people rushing around made the small island feel like an anthill.

  There was a great deal of nervous excitement coming from those people fresh off the barge. Everyone was afraid of the Corsairs, and the entire idea of a battle was dreadful, but most of them didn’t really believe it would happen.

  Real battles were so rare none of them had ever been in one. Besides, not only did they have the impervious-feeling Floating Fortress, they also had Jillybean, the “Mad Queen” who’d not only defeated the Corsairs before, she also cut such a strangely imposing figure, despite not being even five and half feet tall, that they were reassured whenever she strode past.

  For the most part, Jenn and Stu kept close to Jillybean, following her about as she dashed here and there, making certain her five hundred subjects remained constantly reassured and busy.

  If the two ever questioned why they weren’t allowed to do more to help she reminded them of their ‘important mission’ until both began to think there was no mission and that she was keeping them close by to make sure Eve didn’t slip into control when no one was looking.

  At one point that morning they ran into Diamond, who was almost unrecognizable. As the Floating Fortress had been slowly drifting towards its certain destruction, Diamond had been busy re-becoming herself. She had worked laboriously on her hair, her makeup and her attire, becoming pitifully overemphasized from head to foot. From fifteen feet away, it was as though she had lost twenty years and might have been a teenager; from three feet away, she gained back all twenty and added ten on top of it, especially around the eyes, which were the desperate eyes of a middle-aged woman.

  She had sought out Jillybean and her determination to present herself bordered on violence. “Your Majesty! It’s me, Diamond. You accidentally left me behind back on the barge thing.” She tittered even at her own remark.

  Jillybean was thrown into confusion by the sight of her. On what might have been the eve of battle, her makeup, her curled hair and her exceedingly short miniskirt didn’t make sense and Jillybean’s mind see-sawed between dark and light, between cold attention to detail and nebulous, uncertain thoughts that were mostly made up of questions without answers.

  “Diamond?”

  “Yes, that’s me.” This was followed by a tee-hee which threw Jillybean completely over.

  Jenn saw her eyes flicker, turning darker and darker. She moved quickly to Diamond’s side. “Hey, could you get us something to eat?” It was already ten in the morning and she couldn’t remember when they had eaten last.

  “Food?” The concept seemed foreign to Diamond and her small laugh was as uncertain as ever.

  “Yes, food!” Jillybean snapped. “You know what food is, right?”

  Diamond looked hurt and Jenn hurried her away as Stu went to Jillybean. “She’ll get us something, don’t worry. Let’s wait over here, out of the wind.” A cold, biting wind had picked up, blowing steadily from the north.

  “Didn’t I set up a centralized kitchen? I swear that was something I did. Yes, I put Miss Shay in charge of it because she has that mean lunch-lady kinda feel. That’s what Sadie says.”

  “Yes, you did,” Stu assured. “And you set up a schedule for eating and one for working and one for sleeping. The only problem is that you didn’t put yourself on any of these. You need to take a break, too, Jillybean.”

  As correct as he was, the idea bothered her. “I suppose, but not here. I can’t have my people see me sitting around doing nothing while they’re all working.”

  They went inside and soon enough Diamond and Jenn returned. Diamond looked very pleased with herself; she had managed to walk and carry a bowl of seagull egg soup without spilling a drop. She was such a simple, sweet creature that Jillybean begged forgiveness for her rude behavior. She even kissed the ex-stripper’s cheek.

  Diamond went away with tears in her eyes.

  They ate their brunch in Gerry’s office, where the cold wind rattled the windows and the tension mounted with each gust. “Go ahead, Jenn,” Jillybean said, “It’s okay to mention that the wind is a bad sign.”

  “It’s not the wind, it’s the clouds.” She pointed at the streaking white cirrus clouds stationed at the top of the sky. “They’re going crosswise to the wind. Everyone knows that’s trouble for what lies beneath.”

  Jillybean blew out a soft despairing breath. “For once I agree with the signs. The wind will pull around to the east soon enough and if I’m not wrong, there will be trouble.” She could picture the Corsairs flying down on them, borne by that southern wind, and when it turned eastward it would blow them right through the mouth of the bay.

  She pushed aside her bowl, leaving only the rubbery remains of an overcooked egg. “It’s time we get going,” she said, gazing out the window as the Saber made yet another trip from the island to the moored barge. “It’s too bad we can’t leave the Saber behind. Moving those chains is not going to be easy without her.”

  “Where are we going exactly?” Stu asked. He had been silent almost all morning. This was the first time he had been able to ask a question before Jillybean could answer. Her mind had been zipping along at such a frantic pace that three times she had answered questions that were just forming on his lips.

  Jillybean paused on the way towards the door. “We’re going to go pick a fight.”

  “A what?” Jenn asked, hurrying to catch up as Jillybean strode out into the middle of the chaos. In spite of being almost the same size as Jillybean, Jenn felt like a child running to catch up with her mother. “A what? A fight? Why? With who? Don’t we have the Corsairs already to worry about?”

  “Yes, a fight. Can you go ask…who is the harbor master? That guy over there? Can you ask him to hold the Saber the next time she docks? I’ll explain everything to you on the way.”

  Before Jenn could say anything, Jillybean went to talk to a line of people. She looked very regal, shaking hands, offering reassurances with a calm smile, while Stu stood very close at hand, looking more or less like a rock-faced bodyguard.

  Jenn didn’t bother with the harbor master who was a useless old Islander with a protruding hernia that he always kept one hand on as he limped around. She leapt onto the Saber even before it touched and for just a moment, she lost herself in Mike’s beaming smile, matching it with one of her own.

  Then she remembered Jillybean’s words about picking a fight and the smile dimmed. As the boat
was unloaded—food and ammo mostly—she told him about her morning, including what Jillybean had said.

  “It’s got to be the Santas,” Mike guessed, unhappily. “Why would she want to pick a fight with them?”

  Gerry the Greek was left in charge and although everyone asked where they were going, Jillybean only answered with a cryptic: “On a very important mission. We’ll be back tonight.” Goodbyes were said and the four waved cheerily enough until they were out of sight, passing south beneath the remains of the Bay Bridge. Mike hadn’t asked where they were going and the fact she hadn’t corrected his course was proof enough that they were heading to the Santas.

  With a final look back, Jillybean went below and came back with her bag of pipe-bombs.

  They all stared as she tested the batteries on both the detonators and the receivers. Mike eventually began shaking his head. “What’s with the bombs? And why on earth are we going to pick a fight with the Santas? Are you trying to guarantee that we all die no matter what?” He felt justified that his tone was biting.

  It wasn’t a good time for biting, however. Jillybean shot him a look of such nastiness that it made him rethink his words. She was holding a bomb, after all. By the barest of margins, she was able to master the voice in her head, but still did not answer him.

  Jenn waited until the bombs had been checked and safely stowed before she said, “I think you owe us an explanation. You are putting our lives at risk.”

  “True, but did you not pledge those lives to me?”

  This stunned Jenn and Stu. They had no idea what their oaths truly entailed and both had the same thought: Have we pledged to become slaves?

  “I didn’t make any pledge,” Mike said, “and technically part of this boat should belong to me, at least until we turn her over to Gerry. I should be in on any decision that’s made concerning her. And you know what? Pulling this oath business makes me glad I didn’t make one. You can’t just…”