GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  “They said we would lose,” the corpse at the front of the ramp said, in a slurring mumble. When it rolled over, Jillybean saw it was Dango Ferem. Most of him, that is. Half his face was gone, replaced by a shock of gore and shards of bone. He coughed and half a tooth plinked down among the brass.

  “I’m sorry.” Jillybean couldn’t look at him.

  “They said we would lose,” he mumbled again. “But we didn’t.” He turned his one bulging eye out to the bay where a dozen boats were burning, belching out greasy smoke. Around them were the dead bodies of Corsairs floating in an undulating tide. There were so many of them, she could have hopped, one to the next, all the way back to Alcatraz. The sight was sickening and yet Jillybean stared.

  Dango coughed and then grunted out, “We won, but I’m going to die, aren’t I? That’s why you’re not saving me.”

  “Huh?” she blurted. She hurried to his side, touched his wrist and yanked her hand back when she felt his pulse. “You’re still alive!” Tentatively she checked his pulse again. He wouldn’t be alive for much longer.

  Let me help, Eve whispered into her ear. Let me make it quick. She was so eager that she had Jillybean’s knife out and had it poised in front of Dango’s eye before Jillybean could even blink.

  “No…no thanks,” Dango said, giving the knife a single glance. “I’m not afraid to die. I just want to take one more of them with me. You should go save someone worth saving.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.” She paused, looking down at him. “Good luck, Dango.” She left him, but not without casting a last glance north toward the Corsairs. The small flotilla of ships had broken up and were now going to the many stricken ships, saving men and trying to keep some of the boats from sinking.

  The Corsairs weren’t done and that meant Jillybean couldn’t be either. Eve would have to wait. “Who’s in charge at Yerba Buena?” she barked into the radio as she mounted a different ladder. Trying to navigate the bloody lanes between the containers was insane and would only add to Jillybean’s own madness. She couldn’t afford it.

  “Hello?” a scared voice asked over the radio. “Is this the Queen?”

  “Yes. Who is this? Are you in charge?”

  There was a pause before she answered, “R-Rebecca Haigh, ma’am. And I guess so. Everyone’s awful scared. I was doing a count and we got only a hundred and eleven, ma’am and some of them are kids.”

  “Kids?” The idea that children had survived so far wasn’t a good thing in her mind. The Corsairs were so beastly that it would be better if someone killed those kids now before it was too late. It was a sickening thought, but it didn’t make it any less right.

  “Yeah. Eight of them. And we only have a few hundred bullets or so and a hundred bolts for crossbows. Are you going to be able to come save us?”

  “Yes, probably,” Jillybean lied. “Until then I need you to stay strong and fight until I tell you to stop, is that understood?”

  The answer of “probably” had taken Rebecca’s breath away and it took her a moment to reply, “Yes, my Queen.”

  The self-proclaimed Queen of the Bay Area rocked on her heels as a light breeze struck her. Death surrounded her on every side except to the south, where there were only clouds of smoke and the occasional tip of a sail to be seen.

  For your sake, you better hope for a miracle, Eve said from behind her. Jillybean didn’t turn. She could see the girl’s shadow parallel with her own. If Mike fails, it will be my turn to lead.

  “He has no chance and never did. But I do.”

  You don’t, because once I tell the truth, they’ll all turn on you. You’ll have nothing and no one, except little old me, which is pretty damned lucky since I can save us. Only me.

  “Maybe I don’t want to be saved.” Jillybean didn’t wait for Eve’s answer. She ran for the next container and leapt across the chasm and called down into the open door, “Anyone alive in there?”

  “J-Just me.”

  “Yeah? Who’s that?”

  “It’s me, Shaina. I tried laughing like you said, but it didn’t work. I’m sorry.” She began blubbering like a child which made Eve grow and grow until her shadow had thrown itself over Jillybean.

  Jillybean didn’t dare look back at her. Instead, she went down on her stomach and leaned over the edge of the container to see the woman sitting in a ball, again so childlike it hurt Jillybean’s heart to see her suffer. “Come out of there.”

  Shaina wiped a sleeve across her nose and climbed up to the top of the container, trying her best not to look at all the blood and the dead bodies. Jillybean told her to look up at the sky. They went to the back of the barge with the Queen yelling down into each container and collecting a few more people.

  They gathered at the rear of the barge to watch the smoke swirl and eddy, and to hear the chatter of guns. All of them had the same insane hope that Mike and the Santas would somehow prevail and then turn north to rout the last of the Corsairs. They all knew it was insane and yet they clung to it right up until they saw the white pendant the Saber had been flying break free of the smoke—partially break free that is.

  The Saber was on fire, billowing black clouds of smoke. The boat slipped out of the maelstrom, turned in a long curve before heading back in to the fight at shocking speed. They could see the pendant flying along. Then it stopped as if it the boat had struck a wall. Slowly the pendant leaned further and further over until even Shaina knew that the Saber was sinking.

  Chapter 45

  From the very beginning, Mike knew he had no chance. The Santas were not allies. They were as intent as the Corsairs were on killing him, in fact more so since they had been tricked into a battle they wanted no part of.

  More than one of the Santa “Captains” broke free from the smoke only to realize their danger was even greater outside of it as three or four boats converged.

  There was one point when Mike realized he might have broken free with so much momentum that no one could have caught him before he made it to the other side of the bay, but he, too turned back. He did not equate “getting away” with winning, not after what he had seen to the north.

  Even just surviving wasn’t good enough. It was why he raced back into the smoke even though the Saber was marked for destruction by both sides. It would have been at the bottom of the bay had it not been for its kevlar siding which had withstood hundreds of bullets.

  Still, it was only a matter of time before he lost his beloved Saber. “Just light the damned fire and trust me!” he had yelled at Kasie, five minutes before. She and Colleen had obediently set alight the piled blankets, sheets, sleeping bags and everything else that would burn, thinking that Mike had clearly spent too much time around the Mad Queen.

  Mike banked on the ships’ captains being more afraid of fire than bullets. As he raced back into the scrum with a fire raging on board, those few who saw him coming threw their ships out of the way. Most did not see him and had no idea what was going on. They were lost in the smoke—the Santas trying to hide in it and the Corsairs trying to drive them out. Mike had a great advantage over both. He had the second ATN thermal scope and even through the smoke he was able to pick out, not one, but two victims.

  A pair of Corsair boats had nearly crashed into each other and both had lost headway. Mike shot his beautiful Saber right between them, swinging his boom around so that it jutted out, acting very much like a lance. There was a crash on the right and a squeal of protesting wood on the left.

  With the fire onboard, the Saber swirling out of control and belching even darker smoke, none of the Corsairs had any idea what was going on. They were blinded by the heat and the smoke and fell easy prey, as Mike blasted away with his scoped M4, sweeping the deck of the left-side boat clear of men. “Board her now!” he cried. There were curses coming from the boat on the right, and screams coming from his own, but he ignored them as he leapt across the three-foot gap.

  The deck was a tremendous mess of ropes and sails, and Mike tripped just as two
men came charging up out of the hold. One was lightning fast and shot Christopher in midair as he jumped across. Mike climbed to his feet and rattled off half a magazine at the two, killing them both. He then ran to the rail and saw Christopher looking at him with stupid bewilderment on his face as he sank beneath a wave.

  “Wait! Christopher, swim!” Mike screamed, as he tossed aside the gun. By the time he got one foot over the rail, the boy was gone. Now there was only smoke and fire. “Damn it! Colleen? Where are you?”

  She and Kasie were clinging to the side of the new boat, neither strong enough to pull themselves over the railing. The moment he had hauled them on board, he began barking orders, “Get the main raised, fast.” They had to get headway. The fire was engulfing both the Saber and the other Corsair boat, and it would get them too if they couldn’t get further away.

  Neither Colleen nor Kasie were sailors but they managed to get the jib part of the way up before it snagged on a crossed line. Still, it was enough so that a soft breeze pushed them over to the east.

  “Get the wheel,” he barked at Kasie. He had to clear away the bodies before someone got too close and noticed them. After he got two over, he realized that a crew consisting of himself and two women would surely attract notice. Quickly he hauled one of the bodies up and placed it behind the wheel, using the corpse’s own long greasy hair as rope to keep the head from falling to the side.

  He then ran below and came up with a blanket. “Hide under here,” he told Kasie. She gave him a look of disgust since she would be snuggled between the dead man’s legs and the smell was atrocious. Still she didn’t complain. They were past that point.

  Mike didn’t need to hide. His face had been blackened by soot and his clothes were ragged and bloody. He no longer looked like a sweet-faced kid and he no longer felt like one either. He felt old and tired.

  But there was no time to rest. His boat needed more touches of illusion and he arranged it as well as he could, leaving two bodies out where they could be seen, and letting the mainsail fall, untying it so that part of it trailed overboard. He made the Captain Jack, as the forty-footer was called, look as though it had been through the worst of the battle. Leaving the jib as it was, he used it to coax the ship out of the smoke, on a northern course.

  By then the fight was winding down. The smoke bombs had begun to sputter and the overmatched Santas were giving up one after the other. The results were disappointing. Only ten of the Corsair ships had been sunk and the losses were offset by the eleven ships they reclaimed from the Santas, the rest having sunk.

  Soon all the ships were heading north, catching the “struggling” Captain Jack just under a span of the Bay Bridge. Mike was surrounded and had no way to fall off to the rear. He even had the captain of another ship bark at him, “Fix your jib, moron. You got a line fouled around it. What are ya, blind? And get that mainsail up before Gaida turns you inside out.”

  With the Corsairs laughing at him, they passed a quarter mile to the west of the Floating Fortress where he could see Jenn and the others standing atop the containers. No one had binoculars trained on his boat or any boat. They weren’t looking for him. He had fooled both the Corsairs and his friends.

  On the Floating Fortress, there was only utter despair. They had done everything they could, yet it hadn’t been enough.

  “It was close,” Jillybean said. “We were very close to winning.” A part of her wanted to second guess everything she had done; every decision, every thought process, every missed opportunity. Instead, she only shrugged. “We have one action left to us. We send the Puffer and however many of those little boats we have, out to the island. From there, Stu and Jenn will take what children they can and try to flee. I will stay here with the wounded and we will fight to the…”

  Her throat locked suddenly. Eve was not going to have any of it. She had no desire to run away, hobbled by a bunch of useless kids and she certainly wasn’t going to fight to the death, not to her death at least. That was just stupid. Jillybean was barely holding on and it took a moment to master her own body. “To the death,” she finished, in an anti-climactic croak.

  “I’m staying,” Stu announced, in his usual quiet manner.

  “We don’t have time for this!” Jillybean cried, her voice now brittle and high, just this side of sounding hysterical. Eve wasn’t just close, she was there inside Jillybean’s eyes and she was opening and closing Jillybean’s hands. She could take over anytime she wanted but seemed to be waiting for something.

  Jillybean had to hurry. “Get in the damned boat. I am your Queen, or did you forget?”

  Stu shook his head. “You were my Queen and you were great. But now…” It was his turn to choke slightly. “It’s over. There’s nothing to be queen of. So, you can’t send me away. I’m staying with you.”

  She had planned for almost every contingency, except this one. It had been an assumption that Stu would just do as he was told. “I know that’s what you think, but you won’t be staying with me. You’ll be with Eve and I don’t want your last moments spent listening to her. Besides those kids need you. So, please, please get in the boat. You too, Jenn.”

  Jenn hadn’t been paying attention, she was looking back at the wreckage in the south bay and although she had binoculars dangling from a plastic strap around her neck, she was afraid to look into them. She was more afraid of seeing Mike’s body than she was of the Corsairs.

  “Maybe you should send Donna and Shaina instead,” she said.

  “Why them?” Jillybean shot back. “Why don’t I go myself? You and Stu can stay here and die for all I…” Jillybean clamped her mouth shut and squeezed her eyelids down as hard as she could, fighting Eve. “Please leave.”

  Stu let the seconds tick away before he finally spoke. “No. I’m staying. I love you, Jillian.”

  He had been dead serious, which made it all the more difficult when Eve suddenly exploded in shrieking laughter. She’d been waiting for just that moment to emerge and the solemnity on Stu’s face and the fact that he had called her Jillian was so outrageously delicious that Eve couldn’t control the gales exploding out of her.

  Grabbing her stomach, she fell with a hollow thud onto the roof of the container and giggled uncontrollably until she was a shade of magenta and tears streamed. “J-J-Jillian?” she said, her chest hitching. “That was great. Say it again, Stu.”

  He glared, which only had her going again. When she could speak she said, “Don’t be mad, Stu old boy. She warned you. And you know what? I think I warned you, too. I warned all of you about taking up with Jillybean, but did you listen? Hell no, and look where it got you.” She gestured at the bay. It was one of the sickest, saddest sights any of them had ever seen and that included Eve.

  “I gotta say, she hasn’t lost her touch,” she said, with real admiration. “No one can destroy and kill on a higher level than her.”

  “Bring her back, please,” Stu asked. The glare was gone. He felt eternally tired and he didn’t have the energy to handle Eve. “The least you can do is bring her back to say goodbye properly.”

  “And would a proper goodbye also mean an admission of love on her part?” They all saw the laughter building up inside of her. It would have only taken either a glare or an effeminate “yes” on his part to send her into another fit. His tired sigh didn’t cut it and the bottled laughter came out in a snide, “She never loved you, Stu. Or you, Jenn.”

  Jenn finally turned away from the wreckage. “I’ll believe it when she says it, not you.”

  Eve shot her a harsh look. “Will you believe it when she doesn’t say I love you? Stu the lapdog has been begging for that treat for days and look where it got him. It got him fighting her battles for her, pretty much just like I said would happen. You see the truth is…”

  She paused, drawing the moment out. It didn’t matter to her that the Corsair boats were now rallying around their captain. She was singularly focused on destroying Jillybean. “The truth is that this was all planned from the
moment she saw you and Jenn back in Bainbridge.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Stu said. “She’s making up stories. No one, not even Jillybean could have planned for all this to happen.”

  Eve arched an eyebrow. “She needed proof that there were indeed good people out there and Jenn in all her splendid, simple naïveté was that proof. Her very existence told us that there was still a good society left in the world that protected the weak, that would fight evil if it had to.”

  Hesitantly, Stu said, “There’s still no way she could’ve foreseen this.”

  “Tell me, is Stu is short for stupid? Don’t you people practically worship her intellect? Her genius? Isn’t there some sort of rumor that she can think three steps ahead? Well, I know for a fact that is wrong. She can think ten steps ahead.” She paused again, but saw they were still not getting the obvious.

  She climbed to her feet and pointed at the Corsair ships. “Whose idea was it to take one of their ships?”

  Stu and Jenn shared an uncertain look. “Jillybean’s,” Jenn answered, “but it was the only way to get back here in time to save William and Aaron.”

  “How very convenient. It enabled her to be the hero at the very same time she led the Corsairs right to your doorstep.” Eve smiled, as the little group of survivors finally began to understand. “Yes, you see it now. She needed someone to fight her battles for her. Those Bainbridge wimps were on to her, so she needed new dupes to feed her appetite for destruction.”

  Jenn started to splutter, “But, but the z-zombies did the fighting. And, and the people in Sacramento…she couldn’t have known they would make her queen or about the Corsairs there. And One Shot. She couldn’t have known about you killing him.”

  “Oh, please. You told her about the horde almost right off the bat. She’d also diagnosed the disease those idiots in Sacramento were suffering from even before you left Bainbridge. And One Shot…well, you don’t know who killed him, but I do. And I know why. Where would we be if he were still alive? Would we have ever gone to Sacramento?”