GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  Jillybean had been smiling at all the joyous chaos she had caused. Now the smile was forced. A violent twitch shook her so hard that she had to grab the railing. “Do I need to remind you that you swore your life to me? You swore on your sacred honor.”

  “And what about your honor?” he challenged.

  A bleak laugh escaped her. “Unlike you, I never made a vow and nor did I claim to have honor, sacred or otherwise. In fact, I believe I told you repeatedly that I was insane and a murderer.”

  Stu’s dark eyes flashed. “That was Eve! I’m talking about what you did, Jillybean.”

  The crowd watched this in a sort of fascinated stupor, amazed that anyone would question the Queen in what seemed like her hour of glory.

  “What I did was give them a fighting chance, and they have taken that chance by the damned balls!” She held her fist out to the crowd and was rewarded with a new cheer. “I couldn’t be more proud of what they did. They sacrificed. They gave their lives and their blood so that others could live free from the tyranny of the Corsairs. But we are not done yet. I know you’re tired, but we need to fight, tonight. And I’m going to need everyone’s help. Everyone with honor, that is.”

  More whispering broke out and now Stu stood in his own empty circle.

  Impulsively, Jenn said, “I will fight.” Deep in her heart, she knew Jillybean wasn’t wrong about their options. They had no allies, hiding would be death from a thousand cuts and running was simply a terrible idea. And yet how was Jillybean able to guarantee anything? A million bullets wouldn’t turn them into superior fighters. It wouldn’t make them better shots, or tougher, or anything.

  As this was going through her head, Mike squeezed her arm and started frantically whispering in her ear: “Hey, no, please. It’s too dangerous. And you’ll be needed in the clinic. Right? Please, for me? Haven’t you done enough, already?”

  The honest answer to that was a firm, no. Jenn had yet to fire a gun in anger and had spent most of the battle safe behind the steel walls of the barge or hidden in the clinic. She pulled away from him and addressed Jillybean. “I will fight. I made my vow and, for now, I will keep it. I just need to know how you think we can win.”

  “Because we own the night,” Jillybean answered. When she smiled, Jenn saw Eve lurking in her and strangely felt reassured by the specter. When it came to killing, if Eve and Jillybean were on the same page it meant that something truly terrible and gruesome was in the offing.

  Chapter 12

  Jenn Lockhart

  Things took on a very familiar pattern after that. Without missing a beat, and as if she wasn’t a criminal, Jillybean began issuing orders left and right. She had the three ships stripped of ammo and food, and the bodies of the dead tossed overboard. Then she had an exact headcount performed on everyone on the island. During this time, she had a team give her an up to the moment inventory of their supplies.

  Jenn was somewhat vexed when it all happened in record time. She had never gotten the supply list she’d asked for and her census had come up with only two-hundred and four people, while Jillybean’s was two-hundred and forty-one.

  Jillybean kept up such a frantic pace that few people had the strength or the energy to keep up with her. Neither Stu, nor Jenn bothered to try. They sat in front of the clinic in a moody silence, watching as Mike Gunter paced back and forth, cursing under his breath. Jenn had told him the secret that Jillybean had been guarding for so long. He had to be held back from hunting her down.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered for the tenth time through gritted teeth. “It’s not right. She doesn’t deserve to be queen.”

  He was right; she didn’t deserve the title, but there was no denying that she was exceptionally good at it. Supplies were gathered and guards were posted around the island, all so quickly that it boggled the mind.

  An hour after her triumphant return, she finally came to talk to the three of them. Dismissing her ever-shifting entourage, she leaned back against a tree, her hands stuffed down into her pockets. The night had grown cold.

  Jenn did not want to hear another excuse and before Jillybean could say anything, she stood. “Just tell us the plan and know this, we’re only keeping our mouths shut for the time being. It’s all going to come out as soon as we’re safe.”

  Jillybean twitched much like she had on the boat: a full-bodied spasm. It seemed to be an effort for her to bring her smile back into place. “You do realize that you aren’t giving me much incentive to make anyone safe.” Jenn and Stu cast quick looks at one another, while Mike began to sputter in indignation. Jillybean held up a hand. “Relax. I didn’t come back here for revenge or to hurt my people. And yes, they are my people, too. I came back because it was the right thing to do. Just like you three will follow my orders because it’s the right thing.”

  “What do you know about the right thing?” Jenn demanded. “You sacrificed hundreds of ‘your people’ and for what? So, you could be queen? Or so you could save your real people back on Bainbridge?”

  The twitch came again, this one nearly twisting her halfway around. It took her longer to recover and when she did, her eyes were dark. “And how many did you sacrifice, Jenn?” Jenn started to shake her head, because she hadn’t sacrificed anyone. Then Jillybean added, “I saw the bodies in there.” She pointed at the clinic.

  Sudden guilt struck Jenn so hard that it was almost like a physical attack and she stumbled back into Mike. “That was different and you of all people know that.”

  “It’s only different by degree, but isn’t the sin the same?”

  “What are you talking about?” Mike demanded. “Jenn never did anything like what you did. I wish I had left you to drown!”

  But she had done something like Jillybean. She had injected seven people with lethal doses of opioids. She had done it to ease their suffering. She had done it because they were lost causes. It really was different from what Jillybean had done…but it didn’t feel different, not right then.

  “Maybe you’re right, Mike,” Jillybean said, softening quickly. “I was just lashing out. It was needless. Sorry.”

  The apology was suspicious—then again everything was suspicious about Jillybean, now. “What do you want?” Jenn asked.

  The Queen was slow to answer. “I need you. I need you to help me stay sane.” Jenn immediately began shaking her head. “Okay, if you won’t do it for me, then do it for everyone else. You know what could happen if Eve gets loose.”

  Stu had remained quiet this entire time; now he spoke, “Are you worried that everyone will see the real you?”

  “No. I’m worried that she will undo everything we’ve sacrificed for.”

  “We?” he cried in outrage.

  Her smile now was bittersweet. “Oh, I’ve sacrificed, Stu. I had to give you up. And I had to give up my best friend,” she nodded at Jenn, “And I’ve had to watch my people die. They didn’t die for my sake. They died…”

  “They died because you are a two-faced, lying bitch,” Jenn snapped. She was done hearing Jillybean’s pity party. “Now, tell us the plan, please.”

  Jillybean sighed, then reached into her pocket and pulled out two scopes. Jenn immediately recognized the Starlight scopes that they had brought down from Bainbridge. “Mike also has the thermal scope. With the ammo taken from the Corsair boats, you should have enough bullets to clear Treasure Island by morning. I suggest you work in teams of three. If someone goes down, the next teammate takes his or her place.”

  “That’s it?” Mike asked. “That’s your whole plan? I could have thought of that.”

  “I wasn’t done, but let’s address the fact that you haven’t thought of anything so far. You’ve been carting around that rifle for two hours now, but you…never mind.” Stu wasn’t listening, Mike was too angry to listen and Jenn stood with her arms folded giving Jillybean such an icy stare that it was insulting.

  “Just report back when the job’s done, and try not to get killed.” She turned and walked into the
clinic without another word, leaving the three of them standing in the dark in utter silence.

  Jenn wanted to stamp and fume. How could Jillybean call Jenn her best friend? How? How could she do that after stabbing me in the back? She raised a fist to punch the door, however Stu was right next to her, misery stamped across his face. He had loved her. He had fallen for her hard. Seeing him, killed her rage and reminded her that she had fallen for Jillybean as well. She had been the only friend Jenn could ever remember having.

  Suddenly, Jenn was very tired. “And I’ve barely done anything,” she said under her breath. “Look, about those teams she mentioned, I think Mike should take Miss Rebecca and Manny on his team. I’ll take Johanna and Nathan Kittle. Stu, who do you want?” He didn’t answer. He was still staring at the door, his heart and maybe his mind unable to let go of Jillybean.

  “I’ll set you up with that Sacramento guy, Steven Yingling and Kimberley,” Jenn said, tugging at his jacket. “Hey, Stu, are you gonna be okay to come with us?”

  “Yeah…I’m good,” he said, slowly, his voice dry and rough as bark. “Someone needs to tell her we need more batteries.” He looked at Jenn and Jenn looked to Mike, who rolled his eyes.

  “Me? I hate her more than either one of you. Well, maybe not as much as Stu. And maybe not, ugh, fine.”

  While he went to beg more batteries from her, Jenn guided Stu around the island in search of the six others who would round out their teams. Jenn expected at least some whining and more excuses than she wanted to deal with, especially from Manny, and she got exactly that right up until she told the group about the night scopes.

  The idea of remaining safe and sound, and still be able to kill without being hurt in return was especially appealing and more than just the six showed up and they all seemed eager to get back at the Corsairs. They wanted to get to it right away, and they weren’t even nervous.

  In contrast, Jenn was covered in a splendid sheen of sweat and her stomach was fighting itself, clenching and unclenching. When Mike returned with extra batteries and the promise of more to come, he immediately asked what was wrong. “Nothing,” she answered, quickly. “Just excited to get ‘em. Ha-ha.” That laugh would have been out of place in any other setting; with this group, it would’ve been odd not to laugh.

  Stu did not laugh, and it wasn’t odd. He squatted down among the fifteen or so people and drew a quick sketch of Treasure Island in the dirt using a piece of drift wood. As there were a little over two-hundred homes and buildings on the island, the sketch was understandably vague; little more than a rectangle which he cut up into three odd sections.

  “Since it’s right there at the end of the causeway, we gotta take this half-circle building right off the bat. Then we’ll move on to the winery. After that we’ll move up the west side of the island, pushing them on as fast as we can. The last thing we want to do is have them hole up in those crappy little houses on the far northern part of the island.” It was a warren of once grossly over-priced apartments and condos that had originally been built for the military.

  “Oh yes,” Nathan Kittle said, rubbing the patchy scrub on the end of his chin. “They’s just scads of houses up in there. We’s were doing all sorts of fighting outta ‘em early on.”

  Stu leaned back for a moment, his mouth turned down. “Yeah, okay. Instead we’ll try to push them toward one of the storage buildings, here.” On the southeastern side of the island were a dozen or so decrepit hunks of crumbling metal that had once been warehouses.

  “That is a sound plan,” Nathan agreed. “Very, sound. Ain’t nobody’s gonna come up with a better, unless it be the Queen, herself.” He touched his flowing hair with the flat of his palm, giving it a gentle pat. There was something odd about his hair—it was brushed. After a day of hard fighting, his hair was a little too perfect. “Say, I was hoping y’all don’t mind me asking after her, but the two of you seemed to be having just a smidge of a spat back there and I was won’erin…”

  “I do mind.” His answer, spoken in a rough whisper, was so cold that Nathan had to know he was on the verge of an epic beating.

  “Sure, right. There ain’t no harm in asking, right? It keeps ever-body up on the level, right?”

  In answer, Stu made a grumbly noise in his throat. “Anyone else have any questions?” He sounded like he would punch the next person who even opened their mouth. “Good. With these scopes, we have the upper hand. We just gotta be done by the time the sun comes up in five or six hours, which should be plenty of time.”

  It didn’t seem like plenty of time to Jenn. And how was everyone so calm? Even Colleen White looked calm; she was actually yawning as if she were bored. Jenn was struck by a terrible thought: Am I a coward? Am I the only one here afraid?

  She was trying to convince herself that she wasn’t when Stu made another noise of irritation in his throat. “Shoot, I just realized that we’re gonna need a team to hold these first two buildings and to keep an eye on the causeway. Miss Rebecca, get a group of ten or so to follow along after us…”

  He went on, explaining to Rebecca Haigh what he needed, however Jenn wasn’t listening. Just then, she was struck by an amazing premonition: Stu was about to turn to Mike. You’re short a person, he would say, and for some reason, those simple words made her shiver.

  She saw it all perfectly in her mind’s eye: he would look around at the small group of people who had followed them and because of the dark, he would see only one familiar face, that of Colleen White’s. His hand would come up and he would point at her and…

  “Mike, you’re gonna be short a person,” Stu said, interrupting Jenn’s strange vision which was unfolding in real life. “You’ll have to pick out someone else.” Just as Jenn foresaw, Stu turned and began scanning the faces, and yes, there was the slight shrug as his eyes fell on Colleen’s face. And now his hand was coming up. Next, he would point which would be followed by her sudden flash of a smile.

  Why this caused a queer thrill to shoot up Jenn’s back, making her twitch in the same exaggerated way as Jillybean, she didn’t know.

  “Wait!” Jenn said, quickly. “Uhhh, I think that, uhhh, since I have a proven fighter on my team; Nathan.” He took that moment to pat his hair again. “That I should take Colleen and Mike should take Johanna.”

  Mike looked relieved and Colleen was disappointed and Stu just didn’t care. He seemed beyond caring about anything. “Sure,” he said, standing and stretching.

  There was no preamble or preparation beyond that stretch. Stu said, “Let’s go,” and the three teams set off towards the causeway. When they reached the road linking the two islands, Stu paused and raised his rifle so he could look down his scope. Mike and Jenn did as well.

  Jenn had another seismic twitch at what she saw in the eerie grey light. There were at least thirty men at the far end of the causeway and, judging by the glow coming from behind a short wall a little further from the causeway, probably a lot more.

  “Whoa,” Mike whispered. “I think they’re going to attack.”

  “I hope so,” Stu said. “It’ll make our job easier. Let’s find some cover.”

  Cover? What cover? Jenn didn’t see anything that resembled cover. On the left side, the road just sloped down to the bay and on the right were a few sparse trees, and then more water. She would have been still spinning in circles when the attack began if Mike hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her down to the left where the many head-sized rocks began to shift beneath her feet.

  He whispered, “Build a little wall and keep down.”

  That seemed like brilliant thinking on his part. Quietly she arranged the stones into a low wall, while far behind her, fifty feet or so, Colleen and Nathan were doing the same thing. She had just finished when Stu came over.

  “What the hell, Jenn? What is this? How are you supposed to fight? If you shoot, you’ll hit Mike square in the back. And where the hell are Colleen and Na…son of a bitch! Get them up here. They should be here and you should be up there.�
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  She mumbled an apology and as Stu went to hiss at Colleen and Nathan, Jenn tiptoed to a spot a few feet from Mike’s side. He mumbled an apology and helped her build a new wall—hers was much larger than his and she was sure that he would have kept building it higher and higher until it resembled a fortress, if one of the stones on top had not fallen from where he’d lodged it.

  Although the wall was only three feet high, the stone made a heart-stopping amount of noise as it rolled from the wall and down to the water’s edge. There came a long, expectant silence from both sides of the causeway, but no attack.

  The Corsair attack seemed inevitable. Increasingly, more men came to mill around the far side of the causeway. Milling is all they did and Stu waited so long that Jillybean sent Shaina to ask him if he actually planned on carrying out her orders or would it be necessary for her to find someone else who could?

  “She made me say that, sorry,” Shaina added, her eyes cast down. “She’s not happy about anything right now. She’s being mad in the head, again. But she does think you’re great, so that’s good.”

  To Stu’s credit, he kept his anger in check until Shaina was safely away. Then he began cursing under his breath, “Find someone else? Like who? Who the hell is she going to find to kick around?” He wasn’t being quiet or smart. Raising his rifle, he fired at one of the ghostly figures sixty yards away. The gunshot echoed around the bay, however the echo was soon swamped by the torrent of guns blasting back at him.

  “Damn it, Stu!” Mike shouted to be heard. “Get down!”

  Stu had a death wish, Jenn guessed, because instead of running for cover, he casually walked over to the right side of the road and, with bullets zinging all around him, settled in behind a downed tree.

  There was a lull in the firing and Jenn whispered over to Mike, “Are we supposed to shoot now?”

  “I guess.”