GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  Stu and Jillybean pretended not to notice her tears. They moved off to the side. “I have to go, too my Queen,” Stu said. He was not going with Mike. He was taking the Puffer out to the Golden Gate Bridge to anchor their first line of defense. “I feel like something of a scrub, letting Mike get there first…”

  Quickly, Jillybean held up a hand. “Don’t. Don’t say it. Maybe if we live and the Corsairs have been properly dealt with, you can say it. Not until then.”

  It was such a rare thing that Stu let anyone past his rough exterior that few people ever heard him speak in anything other than a growl. “Why not?” he growled.

  She couldn’t look him in the face as she admitted, “Because I’m not good. I’m not a good person. Sorry, but I’m afraid you’re going to be just another casualty left in my wake.” She saw he was about to argue and she barked, “No! Now’s not the time to get into this.”

  “We haven’t heard from the scouts yet. We have time. Why can’t I say I love you? I’ve already told you that I don’t care what you did in your past.” She glared in answer and he glared right back. “You know I could just ask Eve.”

  The glare disappeared in a snap. “Don’t, please don’t,” she begged. “Please. If you really love me, you’ll let this go.”

  His broad shoulders drooped and he opened his mouth to speak, only just then the radio at his belt seemed to come alive as a tinny, static-ravaged voice cried, “They’re going! The Corsair boats just put up their sails and they’re heading south. They’re heading towards you guys!”

  “Got it, thanks,” Stu answered, sounding only tired. He looked at Jillybean. “I love you and I’m not going to take it back, so you’re going to have to deal with it.”

  “She loves you, too.” It was Jillybean’s lips moving, but it wasn’t her and it wasn’t Eve.

  “Sadie?” Stu asked. She nodded and he growled again, this time in frustration. “We need Jillybean back and I don’t have time. Jenn, can you deal with this?”

  Before she could come up with a math problem or something sciency, Sadie shook her head. “Don’t bother. The Queen is duking it out with Eve, but I don’t think she’s going to win this time. She’s tired of being Jillybean. I think she’d rather hide than come back.”

  Chapter 41

  Stu left Jenn with the order to: “Fix her, now!” He didn’t think they could win without Jillybean’s mind and if Eve managed to prevail, they would all be better off committing suicide.

  That had been three hours before. Three long hours of hauling rocks from the mainland to a hundred different points along the bridge. They had to be prepared to fight anywhere along the span, which meant they had to have stockpiles set every fifty feet or so. They had gathered thousands of rocks each roughly the size of his head.

  While this had been going on, another team led by George Parry had used the Puffer to haul the twenty-two buoys into a long line beneath the bridge. They were anchored from above and kept on a very tight leash to keep them from straying too far. They were then connected by lengths of rope, each as thick as his wrist.

  A third team readied fires in San Francisco to attract zombies, while a fourth dug trenches and bunkers along the now completely barren Marin Headlands.

  Three hours had gone very fast and now the first black sails could be seen. Despite a strong ocean breeze, they came on slowly in three echelons, slowing almost to a stop when they were within a mile of the bridge. The lead elements turned northward.

  “Are they leaving?” James Smith asked. Even with his voice coming through the radio and being muffled by gusts of wind, the relief in it came through with perfect embarrassing clarity. He was in charge of the thirty men and four women who were supposed to hold off any flank attack coming from the north.

  “No,” Gerry snapped, sounding both peevish and distant. In spite of his earlier drunkenness and the cruel pounding in his head, he was in charge of anchoring the defenses leading to the southern part of the bridge. To accomplish this, he had only a half-dozen people and a whole lot of matches.

  He stood on the top of the VA medical center, a hundred yards from where San Francisco ended and the Pacific began. “They must have seen the buoys and they’re wearing away. Just you watch, they’ll all make the turn and basically go in a big circle. Do I light the fires or what?”

  Stu didn’t know. He knew eventually they would, but was it best to do it now? Or was it better to wait? With no room for error, he tried Jenn again, whispering into the radio in something akin to a babble, “Hello? Jenn? Hey, is she back? They’re here and I’m not sure what the best thing to do is.”

  Jenn answered in a quiet, nervous voice, “She is, but she’s all over the place. I don’t know if I can keep her together. She sometimes…okay, she saw me. Here she is.”

  “Who is this?” Jillybean asked, suspiciously in a way that wasn’t like her at all.

  “It’s Stu Currans. Are you okay?”

  A long, anxious pause came in which Stu watched the sailboats with his stomach twisting and turning. Finally, Jillybean spoke in a quiet, apologetic voice, “I-I am doing okay. I’m here, at least. And, and I see them. They’re splitting up just like we…I mean I knew they would.”

  I see them? A cold finger went up Stu’s back and he turned to look around at the congested lanes of traffic that filled the bridge. The only people there were his team of sixty men and women. “You see them? Where are you?”

  “Still on Alcatraz. Jenn set me up with a telescope. She thought that me being able to see you would help bring me back. Sadie didn’t think it would but she was wrong. I’ve been watching you.”

  “Really?”

  She laughed softly, the radio cutting in and out, making it sound like she was barking. “Sorry if you feel violated.” She sounded more confident, now, more like herself. “I believe we should light the fires. It will limit their options and perhaps convince them to hurry an attack.”

  Stu quickly gave Gerry the order and then switched back to Jillybean’s frequency. “What about Mike? Have you heard anything at all?”

  There was a long pause and then Stu caught part of a sigh as Jillybean said in that uncertain voice, “Not a word.” This was followed by another, longer pause. Then: “I think we should switch to the open channel. Sadie, me, uh, I think we should.” They both hesitated. Any chance for a private word or to express their feelings without being overheard was seconds away from being lost.

  Although Stu couldn’t hear anything but static, he could picture Jillybean’s face in turmoil, just like his was. When he didn’t say anything, Jillybean whispered, “Bye,” with a dreadful finality as if she wasn’t just saying bye to him, but to the two of them.

  She then turned her radio to what she referred to as the “battle net.” After a long pause where Stu only stared at the hunk of plastic in his hand, hoping she would come back on, he switched over as well. There was plenty of chatter from the other radios, but neither Stu nor Jillybean said anything as Gerry and his team lit a dozen fires along the northwest corner of San Francisco. They were oil-fed fires set with purposeful intent. The buildings went right up, looking bright even with the morning sun blazing away in a perfect blue sky.

  Although they were far off shore, the fleet shied away from that stretch of the city. Just as Jillybean had guessed, there were many survivors of the last attack among them and they wanted nothing to do with the undead. The fleet milled in uncertainty for a good twenty minutes before the leader of the Corsairs sent three ships darting towards the bridge.

  “Hold your fire!” Stu yelled. “Everyone keep down.” This was passed up and down the line and it almost wasn’t needed. Most of the people on the bridge were already cowering.

  The three boats pulled up several hundred yards away and through his scoped rifle, Stu could see the captain of the largest boat gazing at the buoys and the ropes through a set of binoculars. When he started sweeping the bridge with his glasses, Stu ducked back down.

  Stu waited a mi
nute before he chanced another look. By then the three Corsair boats were already tacking back towards the main fleet, hoisting signal flags as they went. Even before the three boats had made it halfway back, ten ships broke off from the main part of the fleet, going north and another ten went south.

  “They’re trying to get us to divide our forces,” Jillybean said, through the radio. “Gerry, keep an eye on that southern group. It’s probably nothing but a feint. Let me know if they land. Stu, I want you to move twenty more men to the north.”

  “Roger that,” he said into the radio. He gave it another long look before he went jogging down the bridge, picking out twenty people. The best marksmen were already with James Smith; now he chose anyone who would look him in the eye. Most would not. So many, in fact, that he had almost run the full length of the bridge and had gathered up only eighteen people.

  The nineteenth was Lois Blanchard. She was white-faced and shaking—from the heights of the bridge they could easily see the Corsair boats that had gone north. They had come in as close to the beach as they could and now a swarm of men were pouring over the sides and into the water. There were hundreds of them.

  Lois didn’t say a word. She hurried along next to Stu without taking her eyes from the beach.

  “Hey, where the hell is Orlando?” Stu suddenly asked. “I haven’t seen him.”

  This broke the spell of fear that had gripped her. “He’s showing his true colors,” she scoffed. “He ran away just like I knew he would. Damned coward.”

  Stu nodded appreciatively at the grit in her voice. It was needed. The Corsairs on the beach had finished unloading and were now hurrying up the long slopes. They disappeared from view for a few minutes behind one of the smaller hills and by the time they reappeared, two-hundred and fifty strong, Stu had situated the new platoon among James’ sixty.

  Neither side consisted of true soldiers, making the battle more chaotic than Stu could have imagined. He was even optimistic as he took the first shot, knocking a Corsair down with a hundred and twenty-yard shot straight to the chest. His little company held the high ground and were dug in, as well as camouflaged, shooting from beneath ash covered blankets. The Corsairs were out in the open, without any cover. They were sopping wet and flagging already from having marched through the shallows, across the beach and up the ash-covered hills.

  In the first volley, twenty Corsairs were killed or wounded and a like number were hit in the second wave of shots. A cheer went up from Stu’s force—then the Corsairs returned fire.

  The cheer turned to panic as the hill was ripped up by thousands of bullets. While Stu’s force had to conserve their ammo, taking only carefully aimed shots, the Corsairs were extravagant in their firing. The noise of their guns blasting away was astonishing loud and yet, the sinister sounds of the bullets whispering by their ears was enough to make some lose control of themselves.

  Over a dozen people cowered down and refused to look up again, their weapons uselessly clutched in a paralytic grip. Thirty yards from Stu, two women jumped up and ran for the bridge. One was cut down, hit by what had to be a hundred bullets. She was so shredded by the flying metal that one of her arms was torn right off and her face was so mutilated as to be unrecognizable. Seeing this horror caused the other woman to stumble face-first into the ash and as she did, scores of bullets passed over her.

  “Stay down!” Stu cried. The woman was out of her mind and she jumped right up again and ran on another forty paces before she too was riddled. Blood just seemed to erupt from her in fountains. She staggered on and the sound of the bullets striking her was appallingly like someone being hit with a hammer over and over.

  It was a mercy for everyone when the side of her head blasted out and she fell unmoving into the dust.

  Stu found himself staring and had to shake away the dreadful image. “Keep shooting! Don’t let up!”

  He was in a shallow trench with Willis Firam, who talked to his gun as he fought. “There you go. Good shot. Darn, try a little higher. Come on, don’t be like that,” and so on. Stu didn’t mind it at all. The constant patter was a reminder that there were actual people around him, something that was very much needed because ,after only a very short time, it felt as though he had been transported to some strange, distant planet.

  From head to toe, the Corsairs were so caked in muddy ash that they no longer looked like people at all. They were crawling or sprinting from here to there and sometimes back again, and they kicked up so much ash that the battlefield was hung over with murky grey clouds that the wind whipped up and spun in little mini-tornadoes.

  Time seemed to expand. Seconds dragged out, longer and longer. The battle grew, or so it seemed. The whole world seemed to be shooting or screaming until the din was so deafening Stu felt like his head was stuffed with explosions that bounced around inside his skull.

  And still they fought, the two sides furiously going at each other with a great deal more tenacity than actual skill.

  In full view of everyone on the hill and well within range of their guns, the Corsairs tried a flanking maneuver. It was useless and stupid and horrible. Clumped together, they became little more than target practice and forty of them were butchered and laid bleeding in mangled clumps. Only an ungodly amount of cover fire saved the rest.

  They fled, falling over themselves to get away, leaving behind at least a hundred bodies scattered over the low hill. Just like that, time rebounded. Stu’s force let out a ragged cheer. Stu did not cheer. He stood, gazing at the dead and wounded around him—he counted seventeen.

  “Damn,” he said or whispered, he didn’t know which. His ears were ringing so badly that he didn’t even hear the radio at his belt at first.

  “Stu! Stu! Come in, Stu. Can you hear me?” It was Jenn sounding frantic.

  “I’m here. I think we won. They’ve retreated. Is Jillybean okay?”

  She answered with a long, “Uhhhhh,” then added, “We’re hanging in there,” which Stu interpreted to mean that Jillybean was not doing well. “Hey, look, I wanted to let you know that the main bunch of boats is moving up. They’re heading for the bridge.”

  There was a sudden scraping noise from the radio and Jillybean was on sounding somewhat drunk, “Sh-Shift everyone you can back to defend it. The bridge. Defend the bridge.” There was a long interval where she said nothing, but as she still had her thumb on the send button he could hear her breathing. Finally, she seemed to pull herself together and said, “Take care of yourself, Stu. Out.”

  Disappointed, Stu mumbled, “Roger,” and stuck the radio back on his belt.

  “So, back to the bridge?” Willis asked, as he switched out his magazine. He wore a wide smile that seemed to just keep spreading. A giddy, bubbly feeling, one he couldn’t fight was causing it. He had lived! Against all odds, he had lived! If it wasn’t for a wounded man sitting not far away, holding his shattered, bloody arm, Willis would have laughed out loud.

  That was the order, only something was bothering Stu. The enemy had taken shocking casualties, but it had been a brief battle, maybe all of twenty minutes. If that had been him on the other side he wouldn’t have given up so quickly, especially now that the boats were coming in.

  Quickly, he brought up his scope and sighted it past the hill opposite them to where he had seen the Corsairs coming. By all logic they should’ve been leaving by the same route, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  “James! Shift right! They’re going to try to flank us again!” Stu’s instincts were spot on. Within two minutes, the low hill to their right suddenly boiled over with Corsairs screaming and hollering, and shooting like they had an infinite number of bullets. Stu’s military sense was less intuitive than he thought and he didn’t see the flanking attack as the diversion that it was.

  He and Willis were in high crouches, aiming over the gentle hump of their own hill, when there came the sharp crack of heavier caliber rifles. Willis let out an oof and fell back at the same time as something fat, fast and angry buzzed
next to Stu’s ear.

  “Left! Left!” he screamed, as he dove for the shallow trench. The dirt and ash around it leapt up like splattered raindrops, hundreds of raindrops. There was no way he could scream loud enough over the blaze and thunder to be heard. “James!” he yelled into the radio. “I need help on the left.” The radio suddenly became clogged with voices. Stu had no time for any of them.

  Willis was still lying out in the open, one hand holding a bloody hole in his guts and the other flung out and scrabbling at the soft ash for purchase as he tried to crawl back into the trench. Stu leapt out of the hole, grabbed the outstretched hand and hauled the man to safety.

  Stu’s heart was racing, his adrenaline pumping what felt like crazy juice right into his arteries. Without thinking, he pushed Willis off of him, went to one knee and began firing down the hill. With a hundred men coming at him, he had his pick of targets. He fired ten times before he ran out of ammo and dropped back down.

  “I need another mag!” he yelled. Willis pointed not at a magazine, but at Stu’s head. Stu suddenly realized his vision was blurred. Blood rivered down from his scalp and out along his narrow nose before dripping off. He had been shot in the head—he couldn’t worry about that. Not just then. Finding his dropped magazine, he slammed it home and popped up, expecting to have all hundred Corsairs almost in his lap.

  They had barely progressed, however. When he had started firing into them, they had thrown themselves to the ground and were only just then getting up. He sent them scrabbling again, firing as fast as he could line up a shot. Bullets came ripping his way, tearing sheets of air, or so it sounded, all around him.

  When he ran out of ammunition a second time, he dropped down just as Willis managed to haul his bleeding body up. Willis couldn’t feel his legs, something he knew was unfixable no matter how good the Mad Queen was with a scalpel. He was doomed, and furious about it, and wanted to get his revenge while he still could.