GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  Ships suddenly began flying in every direction with their black sails billowing and signal flags going up and down. It was mayhem and confusion and sometimes slaughter. Jenn stood on the hilltop watching and shivering with the cold, and as she watched the strange, and at times, graceful sea battle, she felt the tiniest ache.

  It was either guilt or sadness at the loss of the woman she had knelt before. A sigh was all it took to wipe away the pain of losing Jillybean. She had been hurt too badly. And the hurt would only grow as, out of the growing dark a heavy fifty-foot boat with an impressive tower of black canvas sails rushed down along the east side of Treasure Island towards the cove where Johanna Murphy and Donna Polston were trying to get the children on board the Puffer and the other small boats. It looked like a wolf about to rend a flock of sheep.

  “Stu!” Jenn screamed. He was off like a shot, racing downhill and as fast as he was, Jenn saw he wasn’t going to make it—he would show up just in time to get killed along with the rest of them.

  Then it dawned on her that she had a radio. Technology was still so foreign to her that she hadn’t used it much during the battle except to call endlessly to Mike, and she hadn’t even thought about the radio since watching the Saber’s final moments as it boldly turned back into the smoke and the chaos of the earlier battle.

  She yanked out the radio. “Donna! This is Jenn. There is a Corsair ship heading right for you. There is a Corsair ship heading right for you! Get the kids to safety!” Next to her was lumpy-headed Shaina Hale, looking at the unfolding scene with frightened doe-eyes. She was dutifully holding a pair of binoculars. Jenn snatched them from her hands, and watched with relief as the children stampeded to cover just as the ship cut across the far end of the cove.

  “Thank God,” Jenn said. She smiled up at Shaina, who was half a head taller than she was. Shaina was rubbing her stick-like fingers and trying not to cry. At the same time, her lips were contorted in a warped and imbecilic smile.

  Jenn realized she had hurt Shaina’s hand when she had ripped the binoculars from them—Barely hurt them, she thought. They had been surrounded by death and misery all day; Jenn didn’t have the time or the emotional energy to worry over what amounted to little more than a boo-boo. Shaina would just have to get over it.

  That’s not how Jillybean treated her. The thought popped into her head and for a moment, she fought it, since she wasn’t Jillybean and she didn’t want to be anything like Jillybean. Except she was kind and thoughtful.

  And crazy, Jenn wanted to add, however, that would mean she was talking to herself and wasn’t that what Jillybean used to do?

  “I’m sorry about your hand. I didn’t mean it.”

  Like an abused dog that was in desperate need of the least kindness, the hurt look vanished from Shaina’s face and an active, eager to please smile took its place. “It’s okay. It was my fault, really. I-I was probably holding them too tight. Can I ask you a question? Are, are you the new queen? It was hard to tell what everyone was saying or why you were all so mad at the Queen or why she left…exactly.” Her face dropped again. Despite the dents in her head, Jenn thought she knew what the explosion had meant.

  “I-I uh, I’m not exactly sure,” Jenn told her. Nothing had been decided, in fact the question had been studiously avoided as the Puffer had ferried the survivors in three groups to the Treasure Island. Jenn, Stu and Donna had been on the last boat and it had been Jenn who had lit the Fortress on fire, hoping it would add to the confusion that Jillybean and her little white flag had caused among the Corsairs.

  Pretty much the only person who had considered what Jillybean’s departure would mean to the group had been Jillybean herself. Be a better queen than I was, she had told Jenn.

  Although the question of leadership had been posed by the most unlikely person of all, it had to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Jenn knew that other than Shaina and maybe seven-year-old Lindy Smith, she was the least likely candidate to lead them, and yet who else was going to step up?

  Stu hadn’t said a word since Jillybean had left, not a single one. Donna Polston hadn’t been much better. It was fine that she jumped to obey Jenn’s every order, but it would just be something of a relief if she would step up and assume command. Gerry the Greek was in hiding somewhere on Treasure Island. Lois Blanchard was dead, as were James Smith and Dango Ferem and hundreds of others.

  Almost by the process of elimination, leadership fell to fifteen-year-old Jenn Lockhart. But Queen? Queen Jenn?

  “No. It would have to be Queen Jennifer,” she muttered. That was if she took a title at all. “I’m getting ahead of myself.” If she looked at the situation logically then she was the obvious choice of leader, at least on a temporary basis. This was all well and good, however she associated logic with Jillybean and she tossed it out. She decided she would be queen only if the signs guided her in that direction.

  As always, she glanced to the stars first and spied the brightest of them shining bright, as the sun was all but gone in the west. It was the evening star which came and went throughout the year in a manner that was unpredictable to Jenn. Supposedly it wasn’t a star at all. On the trip south, with the Corsairs bearing down on them, getting closer with every passing minute, Jillybean had taken a moment to explain that it was in fact a planet. “One of the nine,” she had said. “It’s called Venus. Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.”

  Jenn liked the idea of love and beauty, but what did these have to do with being queen? And what did love and beauty matter? At that moment, she had neither. Her love was dead. Mike Gunter was one of the many bodies floating in the bay, and as for beauty, she was filthy, smoke-smelling, little stick of a girl. There was nothing beautiful about her.

  She was as ugly as she was unlucky, and the proof was sweeping down in the form of the big fifty-foot boat. It had checked its speed near the entrance to the cove as some of Rebecca Haigh’s defenders had taken a few shots at it. The Corsair returned fire with a steady pop, pop, pop that sent the defenders fleeing inland.

  Since the island was barely half a mile wide, there was really nowhere for them to flee to. “Rebecca, hold your ground!” she yelled into the radio. “We can’t let them land no matter what.” There was no answer from Rebecca.

  The Corsairs had no intention of landing. The boat unfurled its great black wings, raced up, and at a quarter mile unloaded a barrage of bullets into the Puffer and the other small boats, sinking them in minutes. The ship then turned on a dime and sped northeast out of range from any answering shots, but close enough to be able to swoop down on anyone foolish enough to try to resurrect the Puffer.

  Jenn’s shoulders slumped. If Venus was a sign, she had either misread it or it wasn’t meant for her. She wasn’t love or beauty, she was pain, anger and bad luck. Beauty might better describe Rebecca or Johanna or Colleen White…Jenn felt a lurch in her chest at the thought of Colleen who had certainly died with Mike.

  She sighed again, and Shaina asked, “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I think,” Jenn answered. “Maybe we should…” She didn’t know exactly what they should be doing. Escaping seemed the smartest thing to do, and if they had a way off the island, she would’ve taken it. Mounting some sort of defense was the next smartest move and if they had bullets to go along with their nearly empty guns she figured they might be able to hang on until morning.

  What would Jillybean do? The thought just popped into her head, making her growl. Even if she knew what Jillybean would do, Jenn would probably do the opposite out of spite. “Let’s go find Stu,” she said.

  Twilight had snuck up on them and Jenn found she couldn’t make out Shaina’s features with any sort of exactness. It also made finding Stu difficult. Eventually they found him on the southern edge of the cove watching the Puffer tumble and break apart in the light surf. The toes of his boots were beginning to get covered over by the incoming tide; he didn’t seem to care.

  Not far away Donna Polston sat on the long trunk
of a downed tree, her injured arm pinned up in her jacket. Sitting in a row next to her, very much like a line of baby ducks, were nine shell-shocked children.

  “What are we going to do?” Stu asked, tonelessly before Jenn had a chance to ask him the same question. She had never seen him so tired, which was no wonder. No one had worked so doggedly in the three days leading up to the battle, and no one had fought harder during it. He’d been in the thick of the fight almost without let up.

  Donna, ghost-white in the dark from her blood loss, made no effort to answer; she only stared with dead eyes at the water. Jenn felt a rush of disappointment. She wasn’t going to be much help.

  It would all be on Jenn. “I think,” Jenn said slowly, picking her words carefully, “it would be best not to mention what was said back on the barge. What’s done is done and no amount of shoulda, woulda, coulda, is going to change the situation we’re in now. It’ll only hurt things and maybe lead to…” She didn’t know the word disillusionment and was forced to go with, “It’ll lead to unhappy feelings. If anyone asks, we’ll say that Jillybean was a great queen and she died…”

  Again, she was stymied. She had been about to say Jillybean had died for the “Greater good,” however she simply couldn’t bring herself to. “She died a hero, killing the Corsair leader.”

  “I knew it!” Shaina gushed in relief. “That’s what I thought all along. I knew she couldn’t be bad at all, even a little.”

  Her joy jerked Stu from what had seemed to be a trance. He stared hard at Shaina as if he thought she was joking. When he finally realized that she wasn’t, he let out a single low bark of rueful laughter before turning away from her. “She thought you would be a good queen,” he told Jenn.

  Jenn glanced to where the Evening Star had shone diamond bright only minutes before. It had already been swallowed up among the billions of other stars, no longer so perfectly singular in its brightness. “I don’t know about that, at least right now. We don’t even know who’s left alive. There may be too few of us to matter.”

  “Someone has to lead,” Donna said, bringing on another turn of particularly heavy silence. No one wanted the thankless job. No one wanted to be given the rank of captain on a ship that was sinking fast.

  Shaina suddenly burst out, “I vote for Jenn to be queen. She’s great and she’s smart and she’s an awful lot like the old queen. You know, because she’s so great and she can heal people, too, just like…”

  “I can’t heal anyone,” Jenn said, cutting across Shaina. She had to nip this sort of talk in the bud and do it quickly. There was no way she was going to start cutting people open in the dead of night with no tools and no knowledge and only the barest scrap of experience. It would be useless, no, it would be worse than useless. She didn’t know anything about surgery or what artery was where or what the different parts inside of a person did. Who knows how many people she would accidentally kill by cutting the wrong thing? It would be a disaster. It would be murder.

  And then there would be the looks and the whispers. Everyone would compare her to Jillybean without knowing the real truth. And even if she told them that Jillybean had been really evil, they probably wouldn’t believe it. They’d say she was jealous and they’d say that she was just a kid and that she was only pretending to be queen.

  “No, I can’t do it,” Jenn insisted. “I can’t do any of it. Maybe Rebecca or Johanna would want to be queen.”

  Shaina looked suddenly uncomfortable, twining her hands together. In a low conspiratorial whisper, she said, “Johanna is nice ’n all, but you know she’s a…” Her voice dropped even lower, “She’s a Corsair.” It didn’t seem to matter to Shaina that Johanna Murphy had been a slave to the Corsairs. Just the association was enough to taint her. Jenn doubted it was something she’d come up with on her own. Others must have been talking; Johanna Murphy was ruled out.

  “And Miss Rebecca is a real sweetie, but she’s just a kid. Everyone knows that. She doesn’t know nothing about being a queen.”

  “She’s older than me. A lot older. I’m only fifteen. Ask Stu, he’ll tell you.” Stu shrugged and gave an abortive nod.

  This didn’t slow Shaina down. “But everyone knows that you are great. Everyone says it. You’re just being…” Her face froze, queered up slightly, giving her the appearance of being caught between thoughts. Finally, she spat out, “Nice. You’re being nice is all. That’s what everyone likes about you. You’re nice, just like the old queen.”

  Jenn riled at this and had much to say in argument against her being queen, however just then Donna said in a deeply fatigued voice, “It’s going to have to be you. Sorry, but it’s true. You were born on the Island, which makes you part, Islander, and you were one of us Hill People for the last nine years, and all the Sacramento people think you’re Vice-Queen or something.”

  “But that doesn’t…”

  Donna cut across her. “Yes, it does. If someone doesn’t step up, people will start leaving. And when one goes, everyone will go. They’ll try to swim across to Oakland. Most of them will drown, you know that.”

  There were so few swimmers among them and even those that could swim would have a hard time fighting the cold, the current and the distance. They would have to go weaponless, which would make them easy prey for either the undead or the Corsairs, who would hunt them down with ease. Jillybean had warned them that running out of the question, and she had been right.

  “If you don’t become queen,” Donna said, “we’ll all be dead or captured by this time tomorrow.” She stared tiredly at Jenn, who wanted to fume or cry or hide. In the end, Jenn accepted her position with a shrug. Donna didn’t look any happier at the idea and shrugged back at her before asking, “Could you take a look at my arm? It’s aching pretty good. Yeah, I know you’re not a real surgeon or anything, but everyone says Jillybean taught you a lot.”

  “Everyone keeps saying everyone says this or that, well everyone is dead wrong.”

  “Please,” Donna begged without much real effort.

  It’s what Jillybean would do. “Yeah, I guess. Does anyone know where Jillybean’s medical stuff is?”

  “I do.” Aaron Altman had been on the log next to Donna. He raised his one arm. “My mom is working at the clinic. It’s…it’s kinda ugly in there. You know, like real gross. Come on, I’ll show you. Just try not to puke.”

  Jenn hesitated, not because she was certain that she would puke, and everyone would say: Jillybean never puked. She hesitated because someone had to do something about defending them. “Stu? Are you okay enough to maybe figure out how to, uh, you know arrange whoever we have left, defensively?”

  He nodded and shrugged at the same time, making Jenn think that instead of having people kneel before her, they could all just shrug to show their unending loyalty to her crown. As he walked off into the night, Donna reeled slightly and knocked into Jenn, who took her under her good arm.

  Thankfully, the clinic was not far. Its windows and doors were double blanketed so that the light of a forty candles did not escape into the night. It was so well lit that there was no way for Jenn to miss any of the dreadful sights: a stack of bodies was piled in one corner of the room, the floor was slick with blood, both fresh and bright as well as dark and old. And there was more blood on the walls and, horrifically, on the ceiling.

  Donna was the forty-third patient to come through the doors. Some of them had died and had been stacked, some had their minor wounds patched and were told to go back out to fight, and some had gotten tired of waiting and had left on their own. Currently there were fifteen patients in varying degrees of pain and with varying degrees of life expectancy.

  “Oh no,” Miss Shay cried when she saw her fellow coven member. Her face was full of woe until she saw Jenn then, perhaps out of habit, it took on a pinched look. “Is it true? Is the Queen dead? Did she really blow herself up?”

  Jenn found it odd that Miss Shay had called Jillybean “Queen.” The condescending attitude she displayed at ever
y opportunity had not changed, however. “She did not simply blow herself up,” Jenn snapped. “She destroyed nine ships, killed the Corsair captain and started a huge fight among them.” It was a testament to how much she despised Miss Shay that she was willing to defend Jillybean.

  “And brought all this down on our heads,” Miss Shay retorted, her eyebrow now so far up her head it looked like it was trying to crawl into her hairline. “All of this for a boat! Forgive me if I don’t pretend to care that she died. I just need to know what I’m supposed to do with all of them.” She waved a hand at the wounded lying around the room. There were only ten beds and the others were stretched out on blankets.

  “The new Queen is a healer, too,” Shaina said, defiantly. She had followed along after Jenn. “She’s great is what she is.”

  Miss Shay rallied briefly to this challenge, then, abruptly her energy fizzled out of her and she said, “We’ll see how great a queen she will be.” She turned and pointed at the first bed where the other Corsair slave, Diamond was lying on her side with her knees drawn up. She was so pale and motionless that Jenn feared she was already dead.

  “Gut shot,” Miss Shay intoned.

  “Gut shot?” Jenn whispered more to herself than to anyone. In a shaky voice, she asked, “Diamond?” Diamond opened her eyes. There was fear in them, but as she recognized Jenn it turned to hope.

  “Is the Queen here?” she asked.

  Shaina was quick to answer when Jenn faltered. “This is a new Queen. She’s a healer, too. She’s great.”

  Jenn hated hearing how “great” she was, especially when she was just about to fall on her face. There was no way she could help Diamond. Still she tried to smile as she said, “Let’s see what’s wrong. Is that okay?”

  With a great deal of grunting and tears, Diamond rolled over and showed Jenn what was left of her intestines. It was a horrifying mass of huge squiggly white worms swimming in a pool of blood. In seconds, Jenn could feel the bile burning up the back of her throat. She was on the verge of puking, not because of the horrible sight, but because she knew there was absolutely nothing she could do to help.