GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  Jillybean was swimming with slow strokes as if she were playing in a pool and not in a bay surrounded by people bent on killing her. She was so dazed by the explosion that she didn’t see the Captain Jack or hear Mike calling for her. And she didn’t fight it as he hauled her onto the deck, streaming water, her eyes going in two different directions.

  “Is Jenn okay?” Mike had been barking questions into her face and shaking her, however this was the first thing she understood.

  “Sh-she sh-should live,” Jillybean said, faintly. Her head felt strangely squishy and she was sure that if she touched her skull her fingers would leave indentations. After a deep breath she said, “The best way to help her is to head out to sea.”

  Mike wanted to ask how that could help in anyway, but he had no idea what she had confessed to the others and still trusted her. “Can you take the wheel?” he asked her.

  Colleen was happy to give up the responsibility. She had been sure she was going to wreck the ship or make it fall over, the way they sometimes did. Jillybean, feeling better with every passing second, didn’t hesitate and took control, immediately turning to starboard even before Mike had a chance to give the order. The two worked as a well-coordinated team and soon they were racing on a northwest tack, leaving a strange battle behind them.

  Half the Corsairs were going at each other with guns blazing, while the other half were racing around the bay or trying to get out of it.

  “Who are they fighting?” Colleen asked.

  “Themselves,” Jillybean answered. “The Black Captain’s chief lieutenant hinted that theirs was a loose confederation and I suspect that maybe with the lieutenant dead, things might be unraveling. It’s why we need to get north as fast as we can.”

  Mike gave her a quick look. “North? We’re not going all the way back to the Grays Harbor. Not with…”

  “Trust me,” Jillybean said, with a small, ironic smile that he didn’t understand. She turned to Colleen. “My head is aching. Can you do me a favor and find some Tylenol or aspirin or something.” Colleen came back ten minutes later with an apology and a bottle of berry/potato wine that nearly made Jillybean puke after the first swallow. When she had taken five such rancid swallows, her head swam but pounded less.

  Nothing could help the pain in her heart or the sea of confusion she found herself in. Did she go north to try to save Neil and Emily? Neil hadn’t just adopted her, he had remained devoted to her despite knowing the true extent of her evil. He was a good man, one that she never truly deserved. And Emily…Emily was one of the most truly innocent, loving, kindhearted creatures left on earth.

  If humanity had any hope, it wasn’t going to be found in Jillybean, it was going to be found in someone like Emily.

  “Or Jenn.”

  Jillybean looked back south where a fire was raging on the Floating Fortress. If she went south would Jenn or Stu even allow her to help them? Would they ever forgive her? She was sure the answer was no on both counts.

  Mike had been so busy tossing the dead overboard and getting the Captain Jack in proper sailing form that he hadn’t noticed the smoke coming from the barge, and soon the dark hid it altogether. He had thought she was eyeing the Corsair boats racing in a long line south of them.

  By then they were turning toward Pelican Harbor. It was now Mike’s turn to say, “Trust me. These guys can sail like nobody’s business, but they don’t know this bay like I do. They’re fighting both the current and the headwind. In these conditions it’s best to sneak up on the Golden Gate.”

  He proved correct and, by the time they went shooting through one of the slim breaks in the ropes, he had a four-hundred yard lead which doubled as the Corsairs slowed to slip between the buoys.

  As soon as the Captain Jack pushed through the low incoming waves they found themselves in the Pacific. With a long look at Jillybean, Mike turned them north.

  An hour passed in silence. Colleen and Kasie huddled under a blanket, while Mike stood at the wheel more worried about what was going on behind him than in front. “If they’re chasing us there’s no way to know. We should turn back.”

  “Not yet. We’ll light one of their fire pots. That’ll draw them on.” It would also give her more time to think. Which way to go? It made all the sense in the world to go north. With every mile she traveled she was that much further from trouble, that much further from hate and death and misery. It seemed obvious which way to go and yet her stomach was in turmoil.

  Another thirty minutes went by, leaving her as hopelessly lost as before. Stu would never take her back. She had destroyed his entire world and Jenn, Jenn would more than likely…Jillybean jerked as a whispering sound came right at them out of the near silent night. She even ducked down until she heard a single: honk!

  It had been a lone goose flying south for the winter. It was somewhat lost and all by itself, but it knew the right direction to go. Jillybean cracked a smile. “Turn us around,” she ordered with a mad laugh. There would be no hero’s welcome, or any welcome at all for that matter, but as much as she loved Neil and Emily, going back would be for the greater good. She could help the most people and maybe get back north in time to save her loved ones.

  She had no idea what sort of mayhem and death she would find when they got back to San Francisco but she was utterly convinced she would find Jenn and Stu alive. Not because he was the toughest man she had known in ten years, and not because Jenn was intuitive, smart and tough. No, it was because of that damned goose.

  She laughed again, tears now in her eyes, and Mike asked her, “You okay?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m insane and sometimes evil, but I try, Mike. I try to be good. It just doesn’t work out sometimes.”

  THE END OF BOOK 2…

  Generation Z

  The Queen of War

  Book 3

  Peter Meredith

  Chapter 1

  Mike Gunter

  The forty-foot Captain Jack was doomed the moment Mike Gunter swung her east, slipping within the furthest reach of the Marin Headlands. The wind, which had been steadily coming from out of the west, now spun in strange eddies causing the chains and ropes hanging from the Golden Gate Bridge to undulate, making the whole structure look unsettlingly alien.

  “They’re like giant tentacles,” Mike said, mostly to himself.

  The only other person on deck was Kasie King, who replied as best she could in something reminiscent of a toad’s croak. She had been so violently seasick that Mike didn’t think she could express herself in any other way.

  “Do you need anything, Kasie? Do you want me to ask Colleen for some more…” The wheel took that moment to yank itself halfway around and nearly out of his grasp as the boat slewed and yawed. The Captain Jack was struggling against not just the sudden change in wind direction but also a new current as brackish water from the bay emptied into the ocean.

  Mike fought the wheel back and as he did, he grew increasingly nervous. “I don’t like the feel of this.” He could only describe the sensation coming from the keel as “tight.” It wasn’t a scientific term or even a sailing one for that matter, but as he hadn’t been taught by an accredited instructor, using feel and instinct were the only way he knew how to sail.

  And just then, that “tightness” meant there were stresses on the boat he didn’t think she could handle. He tried easing her around only to have the wind rush in from another angle. There was a long, loud tearing sound very much like someone was ripping a thirty-foot piece of paper in half.

  The spinnaker, a great ballooning pyramid of nylon that sat in front of the mainsail, dwarfing it by far, began to dance and flail, threatening to shred itself to ribbons. Its frayed ropes, or “sheets” as they are technically called, began to snap, looking and sounding like giant whips.

  They had been cruising along, a black shadow in the darkness, trying their best to remain unnoticed, but now they were making such a tremendous amount of noise in an otherwise quiet night that they were practically screaming t
heir position to anyone who might be looking for them. And there were probably hundreds of people after them.

  In a thunder of over-sized feet, Mike Gunter ran to the bow, almost tripping over a sprawled Kasie, who looked as grey as one of the dead. She paused in her vomiting long enough to gaze blearily around in confusion, too sick to be afraid.

  A second later, Colleen White rushed up from the main cabin where she had been trying to make herself more presentable. “Are we being attacked?” she cried. In one hand she held a tube of lipstick and in the other an M4. She had her black hair plaited down her back in imitation of Mike’s.

  “Jeeze,” he groused under his breath as he tried to pull in all the sail he could, hugging it to his body. “No, we’re not and don’t just stand there. Give me a hand. No, don’t trim back the main!” More than any of them, he was mindful of the minutes zipping by. He had counted every one of them since they had fled from the bay three hours before with half of what remained of the Corsair fleet racing after.

  Mike was desperate to get back to the bay area. He felt the sting of each of those counted minutes. He had left behind Jenn Lockhart, the woman he loved, his best friend, Stu Currans, his mentor, Gerry the Greek, and the Islanders and Hill People—he had, in essence left his family and there was no way to know whether they were alive or dead.

  Acting on Jillybean’s advice, he had raced away in the Captain Jack, hoping to draw the Corsairs after him, and they had taken the bait big time.

  The Corsairs were excellent mariners and it had been touch and go until the last of the twilight had simmered away. Even then they were spread out over miles of sea in a great line behind them. Nimble as the Captain Jack was, she wouldn’t be able to turn wide enough to get around them all in the dark. Jillybean, who had moved very little and spoken even less, suggested using a simple ruse to outwit their pursuers: they lit a boxed candle, attached it to a floating life-preserver and then hauled it along for a few miles.

  Like moths to a flame, the pursuing ships drew in closer and tighter until Mike cut the rope and let the little contraption drift on as he suddenly brought the Captain Jack about and wheeled toward shore with the wind dead on his stern. Five minutes later, gunshots rang out. Mike immediately turned south, fighting the wind and an evil current that was set on driving him onto the shore.

  Using the thermal scope on his rifle, he saw many of the Corsair boats turn back as well, then came more gunfire and undefinable pandemonium. Boats were going every which way, shooting at each other, none knowing who was who in the dark.

  “What’s going on?” Colleen asked. Everyone turned to look at Jillybean, who made no move to suggest that she was even aware of Colleen’s presence. Colleen glared but she didn’t have the nerve to say anything.

  “I have no idea,” Mike answered. “And I don’t think they do either.” Colleen shrugged, Kasie belched like a frog and then groaned. Jillybean, again acted as if she were alone on the boat as she watched the shadowy, distant sails cutting back and forth, scattering in all directions…all except toward the very dangerous lee-shore, which was why Mike had chosen exactly that direction.

  It was an ugly, rough ride back and Mike was sure that somewhere in there Kasie had barfed up something vital. A spleen maybe, or a “pan-critis,” which he thought was an actual word for one of the squiggly things inside a person. He could have asked Jillybean, however the Queen had been so exceptionally quiet that he had assumed she had learned how to sleep with her eyes open.

  Even during that rough ride, with the spinnaker billowing, Kasie getting vomit on her shirt, and Colleen trying to untie one of the shrouds which was perhaps the very height of counterproductively, Jillybean stood at the wheel without saying a word, her wild hair like a living thing, whirling around her head.

  This muteness on her part was so unlike her that Mike might have said something if the silence hadn’t been so enjoyable. It wasn’t as if he disliked her, he just didn’t like how, inadvertently or not, she made him feel so very extra stupid all the time.

  She remained quiet, manning the wheel as Mike struck down the remains of the spinnaker and sent Colleen in search of more cordage.

  “Is this the Captain Jack or the Captain Morgan?” Colleen joked as she came back without rope but with an armload of pirate hootch. Many of the bottles were fouled over and sticky, and she went to toss them over the side.

  “Don’t throw them overboard!” Jillybean said, sharply, coming awake with her eyes blazing.

  Colleen looked to Mike for clarification on the subject. He didn’t care one way or the other. “Yeah, if she wants them, keep them. But no cordage? That’s not possible.” Grumbling, he took the lantern from Colleen and went below, but not before taking one last look at the Golden Gate Bridge, looming a mile and a half dead ahead. After that tricky gust which had let loose the spinnaker, the wind had settled back in the west. He had ten minutes before things would get hairy.

  He didn’t turn on the lantern until he had shut the door behind him and then he wished he hadn’t. Below deck, the boat was a shambles of bottles and broken glass. Pillows, blankets and clothes of all sorts had been thrown everywhere. There were stains and burns, and the place smelled of a dire combination of rancid lard, dirty feet and ass.

  At the bottom of the stairs was an open saloon/nav station. Beyond that was a kitchenette/dining area and then the forward cabin. All of it looked like it had been the temporary home to thirty filthy beasts rather than actual men. Mike stepped down onto a blanket only to have it “squish” beneath him. He yanked his foot back.

  “What the? Water? Son of a…jeeze. Son of a…” A few more incoherent syllables spluttered out of his mouth, though he wasn’t really aware that he was saying anything at all. He was too caught up in the fact that there was a leak in the boat—his boat.

  Turning, he scrambled in the mess and the shallow water, searching for the access panel to the engine room, which was really more of an engine “cubby” where the inboard motor was crammed below the flooring. Popping the panel up, revealed the flooded cubby.

  It was altogether expected, still Mike spluttered out more partial curses. He didn’t bother going to check the other nooks and cranny-like spaces below the crew deck, certain that all of them would be just as flooded. The smart thing to do would be to heave around, find the source of the leak and plug it as fast as possible.

  As much as he was already in love with the Captain Jack, even with the mess, Mike loved Jenn Lockhart even more. He dropped the panel lid and hurried on deck and found Jillybean waiting on him. “There’s a leak in the ship,” she told him. He opened his mouth, the words How did you know, beginning to form, unnecessarily. She was already answering, “She’s been growing sluggish, that’s how I knew. It’s probably just a bullet hole or two. I’d check just above the normal waterline.”

  “Above the waterline?” Colleen asked. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. Are you Jillybean or that other girl?”

  Jillybean turned cold eyes on her for seven lingering seconds; long enough for Colleen to drop her eyes. Only when she was properly cowed did Jillybean explain to Mike, “As I have only just begun to feel the wheel gripe, it’s likely the water is coming in at a point above what is considered the Captain Jack’s normal waterline, possibly due to the rough seas we’ve been experiencing near the shore. And as for you…” she added turning her attention back to Colleen.

  For a moment, Jillybean reverted to being the imperious and haughty queen. Her eyes blazed and there was power in them beyond her dominating intelligence or her dangerously broken mind. There was something regal and innately superior in them as if she had always been a queen.

  Then the look vanished completely. “Perhaps you should not say things such as ‘that other girl’ when referring to Eve. In case you haven’t noticed, she is easily offended and does not suffer fools gladly.”

  Colleen’s lips twitched at being called a fool, and her hand strayed to the strap of the M4 she had slung across her
back. Jillybean smirked, arching a single condescending eyebrow, but she said nothing, which was just as well with Mike. With the boat slowly sinking and the bridge drawing closer, he did not have time for a cat fight. He stepped between the two just in case either wanted to add something that would end in Colleen’s corpse floating in the bay like so many others—she was in way over her head.

  “Colleen, could you go look for that hole? Please? For me?”

  The begging helped. She flashed him a white smile within those red-painted lips and hurried down into the cabins. The moment she was gone, Jillybean rolled her eyes and Kasie croaked again and spat over the side. “Are we there yet?” she asked in a bleary voice.

  The words were barely out of her mouth when something thumped into the hull of the Captain Jack. It was the first of many bodies. In the dark they looked like floating piles of trash.

  “They’ll be fewer in number near the south tower,” Jillybean said, speaking softly, barely audible over the sound of the wind. Mike thought she looked quite stricken at seeing her handiwork once again. Over three-thousand Corsairs had come to the bay area bent on revenge. Now, at least half of them were drifting lifelessly in the current all because Jillybean could deal out death and destruction as easily as dealing cards.

  “It’s not the bodies we have to worry about,” Mike answered, taking up the thermal scope and scanning ahead.

  A shiver tickled her spine, making her shoulders seize and hunch. “Maybe you don’t have to worry about them.”

  Mike shot her a look over the scope, afraid he would find himself looking at Eve, the “other” girl living inside of her. As fearsome as the Queen could be, Eve was far worse. She was the embodiment of depraved lunacy and anything could set her off on a killing spree and few things could bring Jillybean back.