GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

Since she hadn’t taken any real part in the earlier fighting, she considered this her second official battle and she disliked it even more than the first which had taken place in and around the Hilltop. That one had been thrust on her so quickly that she hadn’t had a whole lot of time to properly freak out. She was freaking out at a high level at the moment.

  Stu’s single shot had even more men heading towards the causeway, and far worse than that, there were even men creeping up the causeway itself! They stood out against the grey background as white figures while their rifle shots looked like stabs of lightning that made her blink.

  “I got the third one on the left,” Mike told her.

  “Third one on…” He fired his M4, cutting her off. Was she supposed to have fired at the same time? And at whom? How had he chosen that one guy? She had no idea and just then was no time to ask because when she looked back down her scope, the entire causeway was lit by white stabs of lightning and all around her little wall were sparkling flashes that faded quickly. They could only be the heat signatures left after a bullet smashed against one of the rocks.

  Without firing a shot, she ducked back down and huddled behind her wall, which seemed to shiver from the impacts of yet more bullets. Mike glanced her way. “It’s okay. Me and Stu got this under control.” His statement was both condescending and chivalrous. It was also something of a lie. They didn’t have anything in control. The Corsairs were not reacting at all like Stu had guessed. They weren’t running away, they were running towards them.

  When Jenn looked through her scope some of them were so close they looked elephant-sized. She fired and saw the blood fly in white clouds. There was no time to duck back down and she shifted targets even as people began shooting at her. Stinging fragments of the wall flicked off her face and tinged off her rifle, but she kept shooting, always aiming at the closest of the Corsairs.

  There seemed so many of them and they all seemed to be shooting only at her.

  When she glanced over, she saw why: Mike had been shot through the neck and was on his back, choking on blood.

  “Oh, God!” she cried and tried to crawl to him, however there were too many bullets screeching through the air and bouncing around the rocks separating her large wall from his small one. She’d be hit a dozen times if she took one step away from her wall. “Wait! Wait!” she yelled to the Corsairs, but they would not wait. She called to Stu, however he was slumped behind his log, unmoving.

  That didn’t seem possible. Stu had always been invincible and if he was dead, what chance did she have by herself? None whatsoever. But Mike was still alive, so she called out to him, “Mike? Are you okay?” He answered with a pitiful gurgle and reached a hand out to her. She didn’t dare go to him. There were just too many Corsairs and with only her rifle holding them back, she had to keep shooting.

  Desperately she called, “Johanna! Johanna, get up here.” From behind, Jenn could hear the quick rattle of rocks as Johanna raced forward. Then there was a sharp cry followed by a different sort of rattle. Johanna was lying face-down only five paces away.

  “No, God, please,” Jenn begged. “Manny! I need help!” she wailed at the top of her lungs. But Manny was running as fast as he could away from the fight, and there was no sign of Colleen or Nathan.

  Jenn was alone.

  Chapter 13

  Jenn Lockhart

  The Corsairs laughed at her. They couldn’t know who they were up against or how many there were, but a single girl, crying for help was like wagging a hunk of liver in front of a starving wolf.

  They charged and Jenn could do nothing but fight. Mike’s only chance lay in her ability to drive them off. She fired and missed, fired and missed. Her third shot nicked a man’s hip. Out of fear and desperation, she was hurrying her shots, jerking the trigger before she really lined up anything in her fancy scope.

  On the other side of the rock wall, the Corsairs had a wholly different problem. They had no special scopes, thus couldn’t aim with any real degree of accuracy. Still, they had an ungodly number of bullets and the laws of probability were on their sides. Eventually they would get her.

  This drove them forward despite the frequent screams of pain among them. They had no idea how many casualties they were incurring and neither did Jenn. She only knew she was going to die, and that saddened her because it meant that Mike was going to die, too.

  No one would come to his rescue, or Johanna’s or even Stu’s. No one had the guts.

  And so she fired and fired. Twice, she changed out full thirty-round magazines. When she reached into the little satchel she’d been given for a third one she discovered that she was out of ammo. Uselessly, she dug her hand around in the small bag, as if by swirling the nothingness within it she could somehow conjure more bullets.

  They had only recovered a few hundred bullets from the Corsair ships and had dispersed them between six of the nine people involved in the attack.

  “This can’t be happening…Nathan? Colleen? Steven?” Again, no answer. And now she was going to die. She choked on a sob, surprised how quickly the end had come for all of them. For a moment that lasted longer than she expected, she thought about standing straight up just like Stu had. Her imagination conjured a serene death in which she stood, walked to Mike, and died from some unseen and unfelt bullet. With the last of her life she would fall across him, covering his body with hers, perhaps even giving him a last kiss before closing her eyes forever.

  The vivid picture was so alluring that she found herself on her feet and was half-turned before she knew it. She had even begun crossing herself, however, she froze in place even as bullets whipped all around her. There was already a shadow draped over Mike, a shadow that looked a lot like a person.

  “What the…” A new twitch jerked her back as something hot and fast passed through that very small space beneath her pert little nose and her upper-lip.

  She was still blinking and her mind still trying to come to grips with both the shadow and the fact she’d been within a millimeter of having her nose shot off, when the shadow shifted and a white face appeared within it.

  “Give me some damn cover fire!” It was Jillybean, her all-black attire hiding her perfectly. It wouldn’t hide her from the many stray bullets going every which way, however.

  Jenn dropped back down behind her wall, trying to come to grips with the fact she was there. It didn’t make sense, not after everything that she’d done. But for Mike’s sake, she decided that it didn’t have to make sense. “I’m out of ammo, Jenn told her.”

  A string of snarled curses whispered from behind the other pile of rocks. They were so aggressively offensive that Jenn could tell Eve was getting close to coming out and when she did, Mike’s life would be over. Eve hated Mike.

  Somehow, Jillybean kept Eve at bay and a magazine was thrown across to Jenn; it was wet and tacky with Mike’s blood. “That’s all he has,” Jillybean said. “Where the hell is everyone? Didn’t I tell you to form teams? And where’s Stu?”

  Because of the dark, one had to know where to look to find him slumped lifeless against the low wall he’d built. Jillybean had yet to see him and Jenn decided it would be better for everyone not to point out his body. Besides, there were Corsairs to kill. She fired at them, starting with one that had crawled within thirty feet.

  The sound of her gun drowned out Jillybean as well as everything else, and for half a minute Jenn reigned as queen of the night, killing or wounding eleven Corsairs and forcing the rest to cower among the rocks. Then she was out of ammo once more. Her only choice was to run up the slope and then cross the open road to Stu’s corpse. It would be impossible.

  “No, it would be improbable,” she told herself. The difference between the two words was something Jillybean had taught her. Jenn had only given her a perfunctory smile at the time, but right at that moment she derived just enough hope to believe she had the tiniest of chances.

  Something in the corner of her eye made her pause before taking what would more th
an likely be a fatal dash across open ground. It was Johanna’s body, and she was close! Jenn rushed to her. “Johanna?” she whispered as she ran her hands along the lifeless body.

  It seemed impossible with all the shooting that Johanna had died a bloodless death and yet, there wasn’t a drop of blood on her. And neither was there a mark or a cut or any sort of hole in her that Jenn could see. She was dead all the same, her lifeless eyes stared up at the cold, starry sky.

  “Sorry,” Jenn said to her, realizing that her odd premonition was what had gotten Johanna killed. Had Jenn not demanded that she switch with Colleen, it would’ve been Colleen lying there instead of… “No, that’s not true.” Colleen would never have been brave enough to get as far as Johanna had under fire.

  As she realized this, Jenn found three magazines. Johanna had them stuck in the back of her pants. Those ninety rounds would save her and maybe Mike as well—she knew it. There could be no other explanation or reason for the vision she’d had. Jillybean had called her last vision “intuition based on intelligence and an intimate knowledge of the subjects.”

  Perhaps she’d been right, then. This was totally different. The vision had been real. It wasn’t luck that Jenn now had ammo. She was meant to have it—and if she was meant to have the ammo, she was meant to live.

  “I’m sorry, anyway,” she said to Johanna and turned back to the fight with what felt like a cloak of invulnerability draped on her shoulders. Slapping home one of the magazines like a veteran, she put the gun on the wall to steady it and began firing.

  With the knowledge that she resided in the sheltered harbor of some vast great external power, she worked her weapon with supreme confidence. Ignoring the bullets zipping past she swept the causeway clear of her enemies. The moment the last went down, she turned away from the killing and rushed to Jillybean’s side.

  The Queen had been working with a blanket thrown over her head and a penlight clenched between her teeth. “Mmmm!” she said.

  “You want me to take the light?”

  The moment the light was pulled from her mouth, Jillybean asked where Stu was; her voice was tight and her shoulders hunched as if the expected bad news would come with blow. “I think he might…be…” Jenn was staring at Mike and he was staring right back, his eyes bulging and green. “Are you okay?” Then she saw his neck was splayed open, retractors holding back the edges of his torn-up flesh. “Can you, I mean, can he talk?”

  Jillybean glared. “What do you think? That’s his trachea staring you in the face.”

  Jenn didn’t know which of the gishy things was the trachea or what a trachea was or what it did. It sounded important. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “Yes, especially if you hold the light better. Yes, right there. I think he caught a ricochet of a ricochet because all I found was a fragment of a bullet and, thank goodness, it wasn’t deep. It did nick the jugular, however, not badly, just enough that it would have drowned him in blood if I hadn’t shown up.” She tied off a stitch and, without looking up, asked, “What about Stu? Where is he?”

  Suddenly Jenn’s face was hot, and tears were blurring the sight of the gishy-looking things that had no place being exposed to the world. “He might be dead. I-I don’t know.”

  Jillybean’s hands began shaking and she couldn’t continue. She thrust the bloody tools at Jenn, who began to protest. “Just tie the damned knot, please!” Jillybean shouted. “Make a bow out of it for all I care. When you’re done you can either close the wound or pack it and wrap it. Now, tell me, where is Stu?”

  “Across the road,” Jenn hissed in fury. She was outraged that Jillybean was leaving Mike in the middle of surgery and having someone as useless as herself try to finish it was the height of selfish irresponsibility. She was sure she would kill him.

  She grabbed Jillybean’s arm. “You can’t leave yet. I don’t know which is the trachea or the jungle-er, or what.”

  “Relax. He’ll be fine. He’s stable. Just put in a stitch right next to those two. Pack the wound with gauze and wrap it. Then keep one eye on the Corsairs and one on him.” She said all of this in the span of two quick seconds and was gone in the next, racing up the rocky embankment and across the road, leaving Jenn to fend for herself.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered in a sort of quasi prayer, as she made the sign of the cross.

  Before Jenn could cover her and Mike with the blanket, he snapped his fingers and pointed down the length of the causeway. He wanted her to check on the Corsairs first. Suddenly, she was sure they would be formed in ranks and on the verge of charging once more.

  Time was a strange thing. It felt as though an hour must have passed since Stu took that first far-too casual shot, but how long had it really been? Ten minutes? Eleven? Fifteen at the most.

  With time feeling oddly wonky and the grey image from the scope, Jenn felt as though she were experiencing a horrible dream as she saw the still glowing bodies of the dead scattered everywhere in front of her. She counted quickly: forty-two dead and another six dragging themselves back towards Treasure Island. The view down the scope was astonishing as well as sickening.

  Across the causeway were maybe a dozen Corsairs hiding and whispering to each other in carrying tones; they weren’t in any position to attack, but they would shoot at her if they saw her light. Once more, she was about to duck back under the blanket, only just then Jillybean called her name in a strangled voice. “Jenn, Oh, God I need you.”

  “But I haven’t…”

  Weakly, like a kitten batting at her, Mike pushed her hands away and pointed across the road. He then tapped his own chest and gave her the “okay” sign. Jenn was torn by indecision. There was no way Mike could know whether he was going to be alright. His neck was wide open and there was blood trickling right out of it—he could die any second.

  Jillybean’s plea came again, louder and more desperate. Mike glared at her and tried to push her away, his hands, though soft and mushy, were insistent.

  He wasn’t going to let her finish, and she had no choice except to grab the blanket and the med-bag and hurry over to where Jillybean was cradling Stu in her arms, both of her hands gripping his left bicep as hard as she could. “He’s bleeding out!” she cried.

  Dark blood seeped from between her fingers; it didn’t look like a lot, but the pool of blood she was kneeling in seemed shockingly large.

  “The med-bag! In the first pocket on the front right is a tourniquet. Get it.” Jenn dug out something that looked like a short belt with a five inch “wand” attached to it. “Slip it up his arm. There you go…” To get it above the wound, Jillybean had to let go of the wound, and as she did a spray of blood shot out and splashed across Jenn’s face. It was like warm ink.

  “Now cinch it. Good, and twist the wand.” It took six turns before the blood was reduced to a trickle.

  Immediately, Jillybean laid Stu back and began working on him, her hands flying. Stu’s shirt was cut away and the wound laid wide open and retracted. She found the brachial artery and traced it to where it was perforated, cut nearly in half. She clamped the artery both above and below the wound, and then asked for: light, the suture kit, gauze, more gauze, an IV to be started on the other arm, more gauze and more light.

  Her hands moved with practiced speed, but Jenn wondered if it was all for nothing. Stu was lying there for a reason and it wasn’t because of fate. It wasn’t an accident that he’d been shot and there was a good chance that he’d rip out his stitches with his teeth when he woke—if he woke. Even unconscious, he had a look about him that suggested he had given up.

  “It’ll be alright,” Jenn whispered in his ear.

  “I-I think it will be,” Jillybean said, breathlessly. “I think we got to him in time.” She gave Jenn a watery smile, which Jenn returned, cautiously.

  The moment Jillybean got the artery stitched, she released the tourniquet and waited breathlessly to see if her knots would hold. Small dots of blood welled up around the stitches. Jillybean grunted at
them in satisfaction, hopped up, and ran back to Mike. When Jenn began to follow, Jillybean snapped. “No! Watch him. Push that IV. Squeeze it into him if you have to.”

  Jenn squeezed in the IV, just as she she’d been told and when it ran out, she grabbed another. She let the second one flow normally at its fastest rate and, as it drained into him, she alternated between checking his vitals and watching anxiously as more of the Corsairs gathered. There were now sixty of them at the end of the causeway. For the moment they were hunkered down behind cars and creeping around beneath the south-facing windows of the half-circle building.

  “Stu,” Jenn whispered, giving him a shake. He didn’t move or stir in any way. “It will be alright, okay?” She didn’t know how it could be; not only were their best fighters either dead or injured, they were surrounded by the Corsairs, and now with the unbelievable appearance of Jillybean, their most dangerous enemy was in their very midst, alternating between pretending like she had done nothing wrong, and currying favor by saving the very lives she had put in danger.

  Jillybean had set up this attack and since she could think three steps ahead, she had to have known what would happen. “How else was she johnny on the spot with her med-bag?” Jenn asked herself in a low, angry mutter. “She just happens to beat everyone here? My butt!”

  “What about your butt?” Jillybean could be very quiet when she wished and Jenn hadn’t noticed her. “Did you get hurt?”

  She answered with a sullen, “No.”

  “Mike’s going to be okay, in case you were wondering.” When Jenn said nothing, Jillybean looked at her for a few seconds before going on, “And why is he okay? Was it the perilously tricky surgery performed under fire that had anything to do with it?”

  “I hope you don’t expect a thank you from me, seeing as this is all your fault to begin with.”

  Jillybean’s eyes flashed and she began to draw herself up. Jenn deflated her, adding, “Stu tried to kill himself because of you.”