GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  “We have a scope, remember?” she called back in whispered irritation.

  He had forgotten about the rifle. “Oh, right, sorry. I’m just about as night blind as those zombies.” The Captain Jack was sliding up along-side him. It was riding terribly low in the water. He climbed up at the stern where a small hinged ladder was lowered for him.

  Colleen handed him a stained blanket that smelled of corn chips and feet. She led him to a spot on the cushioned bench near the wheel and for some time all he could do was shiver under it as they passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The true horror of the day’s battle lay before them. Along with the half-sunk boats, there seemed to be an endless number of human corpses floating like cast-off garbage, stretching away into the darkness.

  They carpeted the mouth of the bay and seeing them made him sad, and feeling them thump into the hull made his stomach churn.

  The others must have felt it, too. Colleen just stared over the side, pale and clingy. Kasie King was pasty-white, her lips drawn far back in a grimace. Jillybean seemed the most affected. Each thump sent a shudder through the hull and right up into her. The grand appearance of the Queen was gone and in her place was what looked like little more than a child.

  “Thi-This is m-my fault,” she admitted. “I did this.”

  Chapter 4

  Mike Gunter

  Mike had lived in the bay area almost as far back as he could remember and for him the Golden Gate Bridge had always been an awe-inspiring monument. When the sun rose and burst into color and life, he never failed to smile. Now, in the dark, surrounded by rotting bodies and the wreckage of ships, and with ropes like giant spider webs hanging from the swaying, groaning structure, he didn’t think he had ever seen anything more haunting.

  Although they seemed to have left the greater number of zombies behind and silence was no longer as important, no one replied to Jillybean’s guilt-ridden admission. It didn’t seem like there was anything to say. Besides, as terrible as it had been among the dead, the danger had not passed, it had only transformed.

  The entire bay was so dark they could just barely make out the ghostly shapes of boats moving far to the east.

  Mike took the rifle from Jillybean’s slack hands and peered through the thermal scope. It didn’t help much. Instead of indistinct black shapes, he saw tiny muted white blobs that if he used his imagination might look like boats…or bushes or really anything. For the most part, the blobs were collected in little groups scattered around the bay: one group by Angel Island, another among the piers on the east side of San Francisco, and another set by Oakland. The closest were the blobs by Alcatraz. These were very tiny. Strangely so. He asked Jillybean what she thought, however she wouldn’t take back the rifle. She only stared down at her bare toes, which made her next question somewhat strange.

  “What if the shoe was on the other foot?” Jillybean asked in a quiet voice without looking him in the face. “Would you have left me? Back there. I mean if you just couldn’t get to me and the boat was in danger. Would you have left me behind for the…for the greater good? For Colleen’s and Kasie’s sake?”

  He wavered, not quite sure what the truth was and whether it was safe to go down this course at all. There was no telling what would provoke Eve. “Honestly, I don’t know. I had been just about to tell you to go on and leave me. So, there’s that.”

  It hadn’t really answered the question as they were both aware. “But would you have left me?” This strange point seemed both important and terribly urgent. She looked twice ahead of them at Alcatraz, which was slowly firming up, gaining its usual lines and structures. “Tell me you would have left me and not because you despise me or think me arrogant, which I know full well that I am. Tell me you would have left me behind for the greater good.”

  Mike didn’t know much about what the greater good really entailed, although it sounded good indeed. Still, he didn’t like to lie. “When it comes to ships, I’m the arrogant one.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to think I would have left you.”

  Her white teeth showed, almost in a snarl. “What about for Jenn? If you knew going back for me would have jeopardized her life, and, and…” She swallowed, thickly. “And Stu’s and all the others? What if their lives were on the line, would you have left me?”

  Mike had to admit that: “Okay, yeah I probably would have.” Instead of being angry, she seemed relieved. She even smiled, right up until he asked, “Why’s this so important?”

  The smile died. “It’s just…it just is. To me.” The answer didn’t make much sense and before he could follow it up with another question, she jumped up and went forward to the bow, where she made a show of checking the jib’s rigging. He figured it was just one of those Jillybean oddities that he would never understand. He tried to dismiss the entire conversation, something that was remarkably easy to do when he stood and saw the remains of burnt cloth on the end of the boom.

  “She burnt the sail,” he said, his shoulders drooping. If she had asked if he would have crippled a fine boat like the Captain Jack for the greater good, he would have quickly and emphatically declared that a: Hell, no. “Son of a gun,” he whispered, picking at the black, plastic-smelling residue.

  “Perhaps you’ll thank me later,” Jillybean remarked and then gave two short barks of laughter.

  “No, I should thank you now, sorry. What happened, anyways? I remember the spinnaker going by the board, but what happened to the main?” Just then he saw a line of rope dangling and waving in the light breeze. “We lost a line and then…” Touching an egg-sized lump on the back of his head told him all he needed to know.

  He was still exploring the extent of the egg when Colleen asked, “What are we going to do? The boat’s sinking and we only have that one little sail. Maybe we should head over to the Hilltop. It’s probably the one place the Corsairs won’t go. We could be safe there until everything settles down.”

  Jillybean turned on her. “If you think we came all the way back here just to hide, then you’re even more stupid than I realized. No. Strange and dismaying as this may sound, all of this was purposefully orchestrated, and that purpose will be furthered by finding Jenn and Stu and the others and rescuing them if they’re in need of it.”

  “Purposeful?” Colleen challenged. “How so? What happened on that big boat? Who was there? Was it the Black Captain?”

  Seconds passed, marked by the steady drip, drip, drip of water coming off of Mike. Jillybean was not looking at Colleen, though she was faced in that direction. Instead her blue eyes stared through the girl and into the past. Finally, a shiver struck her. “No. It was his chief lieutenant, a man named Philip Gaida. He needed to die.”

  “And this purpose business?” Colleen badgered. “Is that why…” She stopped when Jillybean turned her cold eyes on her. She had been surprisingly “un-whiney” on the way back to San Francisco, but her courage failed in the face of the Queen’s glare. She tried a disarming smile.

  Jillybean was not disarmed by it. “Right now, the ‘why’ is unimportant.” She picked up the rifle and pointed it at Alcatraz. “What we need is another boat.” Jillybean said this as if there were boats just lying around everywhere, intact ones that is. Without looking up from the gun, she ordered, “Mike, take us down the east end of the island and get us right up next to the dock. There are a few boats there that we could use. Colleen come with me, we have to scrounge. Kasie…try to hold on for a little while longer.”

  Kasie moaned in the affirmative.

  While Colleen and Jillybean headed below, Mike took up the rifle and gazed at the island, and more importantly the boats. There were three, moored side by side. They would have to take the end one. “Hmm,” he muttered, unhappily. Other than its general shape and size, he really couldn’t tell much about it. Still, it was a thirty-six-footer and that was enough to curl his lip.

  The Captain Jack needed work, he would freely admit it, but going from a forty-footer to a thirty-six rankled him. It was like being dem
oted.

  Since sailing under the jib on a straight downwind approach was a simple and slow-paced affair, he had Kasie take the wheel while he went down to find the holes in the hull. They weren’t that difficult to find, and he couldn’t help glare at Colleen after he’d stopped them up. By then the water was up to his knees and unhelpfully, she held out a pair of soaking wet boots.

  “They’re your size.”

  This was what she had wasted time scrounging for? “Hold on to those for me, will ya?” he asked as he went to see what Jillybean had found—two heavy cases of ammo and three crates of food. Mike was just picking up the first crate when there came a distant chatter of gunfire. All three of them ran on deck to find Kasie squinting northwest, where a sprinkling of tiny lights would flare then die faster than any firefly.

  Mike was the first to grab the rifle. “I can’t tell what’s going…wait. It looks like five or six boats are shooting at a single boat. It’s getting away. No! It just lost its mainsail, and the jib has turned it hard to port. And no one’s correcting. Holy crap, I think it’s sinking.”

  He handed the rifle to Jillybean, who didn’t bother to look at the remains of the distant fight. She eyed the now much closer island of Alcatraz. Then, with a satisfied grunt, she passed the gun to Colleen and went below deck.

  When Mike joined her she asked, “Can we trust Colleen’s aim? Can she shoot straight?”

  Although Jillybean had whispered, Mike still glanced towards the stairs before he shrugged. “I really, really doubt it. I bet she’s probably better than Kasie, but only because Kasie’s sick. What about you? You can shoot…”

  He saw her stiffen immediately. “I am a relatively good marksman, however, it may be best that I don’t handle a weapon at this point. I’m sure you understand.”

  Yes, he thought he understood. Jillybean wasn’t normal. She was broken and insane, and maybe even possessed. Inside of her head was a hideous, psychotic beast of a person who was filled with the greatest, seething hate. In fact, the only thing Eve truly loved was inflicting pain. It made her giddy. She would smile in the face of blood and tears, while explosions and fire made her laugh and dance. Mike completely understood Jillybean’s fear of the girl inside her coming out.

  “I can shoot, I guess. But, but do we even need a new boat?” He touched the hull of the Captain Jack, a soft, reverent gesture. “She’s really a good boat and, and we can bail most of this water out, and maybe I can rig the spinnaker to take the place of the main. It won’t be great, but maybe it’ll do for now and it will be far less dangerous. You have to admit that, right?”

  “Maybe for us, but what about for Jenn and Stu? We have no idea what sort of danger they’re in and these fixes you suggest may take hours, especially as the rope on board is unreliable. I know you care for the boat, but the best I can do is give the Captain Jack a shove out into the bay once we’re on board the next boat. Maybe, we’ll pick her up later and give her a tow. Right now, we have to try to obtain a functional boat. Think about it, what if we’re chased? What if a storm rolls in?”

  He had answers. When it came to boats, he always did. Unfortunately, his answers were not grounded in the actual facts of their current situation but were instead based on his rather extraordinary ability with sailing vessels, which gave him a level of confidence that bordered on arrogance.

  Jillybean knew this about him and when he started to open his mouth, she turned away, lugging an ammo can to the starboard side of the boat. Over her shoulder, she said, “I bet the other boat is faster and it has to have been kept in better condition.”

  “Faster?” he muttered. “I guess maybe.” He knew that she probably had a valid point here. The Captain Jack had been a bit of a slug even before the leaks. And anything had to be cleaner. She was filthy inside and out. And her bottom! By the time he got on deck, he was half-convinced it was covered in barnacles and weeds.

  He dwelled on the idea of a slick, new boat as he heaved up the scavenged items. When he had them piled against the railing, he wanted to take a good long look at the thirty-six footer, at his new boat, but time was against them. They were half a mile out and Jillybean was pointing out where the guards were and what their reactions were going to be based on what she called “variables.”

  “Like variable winds?” As this was met with a stony stare, it was the only question he asked. He really didn’t need to ask any more. In the next in five minutes, Jillybean covered every conceivable contingency. The most frightening thing she mentioned was her estimation that there were upwards of seventy men on Alcatraz.

  Mike had the rifle and could now count the little blobs with ease, at least those outside the main prison. There were fifteen men on the north end of the island picking through the storage buildings, two hanging out on the water tower, two more in the guard tower overlooking the dock, and a good half-dozen standing in a knot on the roof of the laundry.

  They could expect a few more at the very far end of the island acting as guards, and the rest were in the old prison itself. Since there were a number of small fires going, there was no way to count how many men were there, but it didn’t really matter, at least not to Jillybean.

  She saw the plan of attack as contemptuously simple. They would glide up under the cover of darkness, use the scope to take out the guards in the tower, change boats and shove off, hopefully without firing more than two quick shots. She counted on the lack of an actual barrage to paralyze any opposition with indecision long enough to get away.

  Their hope was that the entire operation wouldn’t last much more than thirty seconds. The one problem: they weren’t exactly racing up to the docks. As they approached the island, the wind died down to a soft puff, which had them moving at what Mike considered a determined crawl.

  It almost died out entirely during the final two hundred yards. “This is a friggin nightmare,” Mike whispered as Jillybean tried the wheel. The rudder failed to bite and only managed to turn them side-on to the island.

  “What do we do?” she asked in a controlled tone, an eyebrow arched, clearly expecting a real answer.

  There wasn’t much they could do. Had they been drifting towards any other lee shore, Mike would have dropped his anchor ten minutes before. Here, it was out of the question. With the poor state of the rest of the boat, he had to wonder if the anchor chain was one giant ball of fused rust. And if it wasn’t, what if the winds didn’t pick up before morning? Did he really want to be caught anchored right off the shore of Alcatraz when the sun came up?

  He could only shrug and say, “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Jillybean looked honestly surprised at this answer. “But this is you. Surely you can do something.”

  He was flattered at the rare compliment, but could only answer, “I’m sorry. I can’t make the wind blow.”

  “There has to be a way,” she said, gazing around. He didn’t bother telling her that she was wrong. In her experience, there wasn’t a problem or situation that her mind could not fathom a way out of. This was no different. Her blue eyes sharpened to squints as she took in every aspect of the boat, the wind, the water and the slowly approaching island.

  Seconds passed. She drew in a long breath, her chest filling, and now it was Mike’s turn to be honestly surprised—she had an idea and as soon as she worked out every angle, it would all come out in a rush of air. He quickly looked at everything she’d been looking at and knew, deep down she had to be wrong. No sail configuration would help. They had no motor and no small boat to tow them. They didn’t even have a paddle and even if they did, they would make too much noise.

  Surely Jillybean had to see that? And yet the drawing breath ceased to draw and out came the expected orders, “Kasie, go get the spinnaker. Mike and Colleen, get the boom down. Again, quietly. Cut away the lines first and make sure…”

  “A paddle will be too loud,” Mike said.

  “I don’t intend to use it as a paddle. I will use it to thrust off the bottom to propel us. If you don
’t cut away the lines, they’ll…”

  Mike had to interrupt again. “The bottom slopes away too quickly. It’ll be good for only one or two pushes and then we’ll be too far out, but not far enough out. Do you see?”

  She said nothing for five seconds, long enough for Mike to figure he was about to get an earful. “The pole is not to be used to push us away. It’s to direct us to our target, which, as I’ve already told you, is that damned boat. If that’s not your destination, then get in the water and start swimming. I don’t care where you go, just be quiet about it.”

  Even though she was only eighteen and just a year older than he was, she always made him feel like a kid. It took Mike a moment to collect himself before he said, “Sorry. I’ll need…” She couldn’t have known he had dropped his multi-tool and yet she held out an adjustable wrench and two screwdrivers. “And I’m going to…” She gave him her knife; exactly what he’d been about to ask for. “That should do it, I guess.”

  “Don’t drop the boom,” she said, curtly. “They call it that for a reason. When you have it down, I need it on the port side near the stern. It can drag in the water as long as it’s tied off and can be easily hauled up.”

  The island was so close now they could hear laughter and people talking. The sound of doors opening seemed only feet away. Mike did his best to work in silence and felt he did a better job than Jillybean and Kasie, who were stumping around spreading the spinnaker across the deck, trying to make it look like the Captain Jack was just another abandoned boat. It was a convincing illusion once the boom was lowered into the water and everyone took their assigned spots.

  Colleen and Kasie were huddled below deck, while Jillybean lay partially under the sail, the scoped M4 in her hands. Since Mike was the strongest, she had switched jobs with him. He was crouched a few feet from the wheel, close enough to get at it if the wind picked up. He needed something, a stray breeze, a little squall, anything, because if they didn’t get a break, there was a chance they would grind up on the sharper rocks on the northeast side of the island, where they would be sitting ducks come sunrise.