GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  When the group came to the causeway and saw the sheer number of bodies strewn about, they couldn’t help looking at Eve with something akin to awe—she soaked it up while she could, knowing it wouldn’t last. The wounded would need someone to help them and it wasn’t going to be Eve.

  There is one thing you can do, Ernest said in that sly, feathery way of his. When he told her what he had in mind, she had to hold in her giggles.

  “It’s so simple, and I do need the sleep.” Sleep was his plan. Although they had all been going for what seemed like days on end, no one could doubt that Jillybean had worked harder than anyone else. She deserved sleep and she would take it, leaving the care of the wounded in Jenn’s inept hands.

  How many would die because of her? How many would suffer? How many would blame stupid Jenn when Eve would show up later and say: I wish there was something I could do. If Jenn hadn’t screwed things up so badly, I would’ve been able to make you whole again. I sure am sorry. Everyone would learn just how useless Jenn was.

  But first, Eve would make sure everyone saw her prisoners and hear how she had crushed her enemies despite the hundred to one odds.

  Like a dog, Shaina was waiting for her at the far end of the causeway. She came running forward and threw herself down at Eve’s feet. Eve could’ve done without the slobber, however the kisses on her hand seemed appropriate. “Now that is a proper welcome…uh…what’s your name again?”

  “Shaina Hale. That’s me. I’m sorry if you forgot it. A lot of people don’t remember me and that’s…”

  Eve held up a hand, stopping her. She could tell Shaina was simple-minded and normally Eve hated stupidity and wouldn’t have been able to abide the woman. Just then it worked in Eve’s favor. Pulling her aside, she asked, “Tell me, Shaina, who did I leave in charge of, like security and all that. You know for guards and stuff?”

  “Miss Rebecca. She’s great and tough. Much tougher than I ever knew. Before, she wasn’t nearly as tough as she is now. The last I saw of her she was doing a count of all the guns we got from them.” She pointed back at the dead.

  “And where is Jenn? In the clinic?” Shaina nodded, eagerly. Eve pretended to be exasperated. “Do you mean I had to fight a hundred Corsairs all by myself and she couldn’t bother to come out and greet me? Luckily, I have you, Shaina. You are loyal and a true friend. I won’t forget it.” Shaina beamed at the compliment. Eve took her by the shoulder and turned her around. “Can you do me a great big favor and tell Jenn to take a look at our wounded? You know I would but I have to do something about my prisoners.”

  Shaina hadn’t even noticed them before, now she stood back in fear as the bearded and tattooed Corsairs tromped past to stand in a cluster with some of the ex-hostages guarding them. Shaina marveled at them.

  “Wow,” she exclaimed in a breathy whisper. “That must’ve been a great battle. We all heard it and I kept telling everyone how you were great ’n all.”

  At the repetition of the word “great,” Eve felt a twinge of her usual hatred for the intensely stupid. “Well, you just tell everyone about the great battle, the hundred-to-one odds and the twenty-eight prisoners I captured, single-handedly, okay?”

  “Okay, sure!”

  Eve sent the woman out to spread her propaganda, she then began what was essentially her own parade. As she toured the island with her prisoners more and more of the island’s defenders tagged along, cheering her. When the Queen had made her promise to them hours before concerning securing Treasure Island, practically everyone had danced and cried out in excitement, caught up in the moment despite their obvious reservations. It didn’t seem possible and yet, she had come through again, against tremendous odds.

  The exhausted defenders made a full circuit of the small island until they found an open area near the cove where the prisoners had their hands bound behind their backs. Eve sent someone in search of Miss Rebecca with orders for her to find a suitable place to put the prisoners. With nothing to do, the defenders, in their passion, got out of hand and began pelting the Corsairs with rocks.

  Eve watched in a trance, and with the gibbering madness inside her howling like a hurricane and matching in volume the screams of anger and pain outside of her, she was in a perfect state of balance and seemed to be floating.

  Jenn brought her down. “Jillybean! What are you doing? Jillybean, you have to stop them!” This washed right over Eve, until she heard her own name: “Eve? Is that you?”

  “Huh?” Eve jumped and twitched. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Eve?” Jenn asked, again. She eyed Eve closely, perhaps looking to lather on a dose of self-righteous crap.

  “No, it’s me, Jillybean,” Eve said. “Your queen, in case you forgot.”

  Jenn had blood on her face and in her hair. She wore a sheet for a gown and it too, was covered in dark, tacky blood. She was a mess. “What kind of queen allows this sort of thing?”

  “The exhausted kind of queen. You may not realize it, but all of this,” she waved her hands to indicate the prisoners, the island and even Jenn, herself, “is very tiring. Being queen is not easy.”

  Eve was a little surprised when Jenn nodded. “Yeah, but it’s no excuse to allow this. We’re not supposed to be like them. We’re supposed to be the good guys.”

  Says who? was on the tip of her tongue. Eve wasn’t a good guy, she was a survivor. It was why she’d been created.

  Then act like a survivor, Ernest snapped. Jenn is stronger than she looks. Don’t give her anymore ammo against you. Play the game. Play the part.

  His feathery, raspy voice disappeared, as did all the other sounds in her head. He wanted her to play the part of queen? “I am queen,” Eve stated. “A good one.” She’d been sitting on the rust-spotted fender of some jalopy; now she stood and said one word, “Enough.”

  The rocks throwers quickly dropped their stones and blended back in with the crowd.

  “These are not just my prisoners, these are my… subjects.” She had almost called them her jackals, which would have caused an even greater stir. “Only I can punish them, and I will. Trust me, whoever deserves death will get death and whoever deserves life will have their life returned.”

  She paused, wondering where that had come from. She hadn’t meant to say anything about life at all, but out it had come with an overabundance of decency which Eve did not feel in the least. Probably a leftover from Jillybean, she thought. It didn’t sit well with her, but she couldn’t take it back now that it was out.

  What was worse was that Jenn was nodding along at what she probably assumed was wisdom instead of a slip of the tongue.

  Eve had to hide her sneer. “Rebecca!” she called, uncertain who was who. A dark-haired beauty let go of a stone that had been curled in her right fist and hurried to her queen, dropping into a clumsy, Americanized curtsey. Eve lapped it up, regardless.

  “We need a place to put these…” Again the word jackal came to mind. “These people.”

  “There’s a place over by the bridge. It’s like a warehouse or something. We can keep an eye on them there, easy.” Eve raised an eyebrow which went unseen in the dark, however the significant pause clued Rebecca in and she hurriedly added, “Your Highness.”

  “Okay, then make it happen. And make sure they are guarded and not hurt. And you, Jenn, what are you doing here when I brought back injured hostages? I saved them. Don’t you think it’s the least you can do to treat them? I’d help, but I was fighting two of them bastards when I took a whack on the head with a…” The completely unfamiliar word “cudgel” sprang unbidden into her mind. “With a, you know, a butt of a rifle and now my head is spinning. I can barely stand.”

  Other than having to replace the word cudgel, Eve had spun the lie so well that Jenn looked concerned for her, but only for a moment, then it seemed as if her old concerns, the ones that had brought her from the clinic, elbowed their way back into the forefront of her consciousness.

  “It’s Stu. He hasn’t woken up yet and his ve
ins keep blowing. I was hoping you could come and do one of your cutdowns. I was going to try, but since you’re back, I thought maybe you should do it.”

  Eve wanted to spin another lie only just then there came an echo from deep within: Stu-Stu-Stu, it said. It made Eve feel like she was biting on tinfoil. She thought the name Stu was pathetic and she didn’t think very highly of the man himself. Except he’s a good fighter, she thought. And I do have him eating out of the palm of my hand.

  Of course, what did any of that matter? She couldn’t do a cutdown, especially since she didn’t know what one was. Even if she did know, it would bring Jillybean back. “I think you can handle it, Jenn.”

  “But…” For a moment, she looked lost, then her lips pursed. “Fine. I’ll do it, Eve.” She said this loudly, but if she expected everyone to grab their torches and pitchforks, she was disappointed. A few raised eyebrows were all she managed to inspire.

  “I would prefer that you call me, your Highness,” Eve said, dryly. “And I hate to say it, but I think we’re all too tired for playing games. Besides, Stu’s veins aren’t getting any better, so run along, now.”

  Chapter 18

  Jillybean

  When Jillybean woke with a long rectangle of blaring, white light crossing her face, she sucked in her breath, immediately nervous, but not sure why. She’d had horrible, endless dreams of wandering in a vast, God-forsaken darkness while all around her there had been high, crazy laughter, piercing, wailing screams, and what seemed like an entire week’s worth of gunshots. Whoever or whatever had been the cause of this howling noise had been hidden from her in smoke as dark as pitch.

  It had not been all chaos. From the depths of the smoke, there had been one familiar voice speaking. Familiar, yet changed. It spoke in a breathy, fluttery manner, as if a storm of crow’s wings had been harnessed to form words.

  Although the voice was familiar, it spoke in a language that wasn’t human. Jillybean could only conclude that it was the voice of a demon, a demon bent on destroying her and everything she had worked so hard for. The voice was the reason she had rushed through the black emptiness, searching desperately for a way out. She had hurried, afraid that she wouldn’t be in time.

  “In time for what?” she asked under her breath. Even though her fear had followed her into the real world and had her heart racing and her palms damp with sweat, she hadn’t budged an inch or done much more than crack her eyelids. One did not survive in this undead world by being too hasty, even in such a small thing as waking up.

  With infinite patience, she slowly looked around and saw she was in a bedroom that hadn’t been used since the start of it all. The paint hung from the walls in long sagging strips and the carpet was molding and layered in thick dust. The windows were so dirty that had it not been for a few missing panes, Jillybean would have thought the morning was cloudy.

  As she was inspecting the room, she heard a long thin crackle of gunfire, the cawing of gulls and the ringing of a buoy. There was also the ever-present moan of zombies that acted as a sort of backdrop. It was, at least after the long, horrible dream, somewhat reassuring.

  With a groan, she sat up, swung around, and planted her bare feet on the old carpet. The groan turned into a back-snapping yawn/stretch combo that went on and on, and had it not been for that underlying anxiety, she would have crawled right back into bed. She was deeply tired. More tired than she could ever remember feeling, which was no wonder.

  It had been only twenty-three hours since the black ships of the Corsair fleet had been first observed covering the western horizon in a great shadow. Twenty-three hours of some of the most intense fighting the world had seen since the beginning of the apocalypse.

  Before that had been days of hard work with little sleep and uncertain and erratic mealtimes. Her growly stomach reminded her of that.

  “Has it only been a day?” she wondered, her anxiety flaring as she realized that her internal clock was not lining up with her patchy memory. She was missing time. “I remember the fight. The explosion. Going north in the Saber…no not the Saber, it was the Captain Jack and we got tangled up with some zombies and…”

  Suddenly the first part of the night came back to her and she leapt to her feet. Stu and Mike had been shot! She remembered that now. After that, her memory was hazy until it simply faded into her dark dream.

  It wasn’t a dream, Eve whispered. You were a murderer again.

  Jillybean saw herself shoot a man in the stomach. The man—the unarmed man—had his hands up. He’d been surrendering. “That wasn’t me. That was you, Eve,” Jillybean hissed as she grabbed her thigh-high boots and yanked them up. “Don’t try to pin that on me.”

  You, me, what’s the difference? We both do what we have to.

  “We don’t have to shoot unarmed men. We’re supposed to be queen, remember? We’re supposed to be better than that.”

  She found her three-quarter-length black leather coat and threw it on just as Eve said, Strange. That’s exactly what Ernie said.

  The flesh of Jillybean’s arms flashed into goosebumps as she froze with her fingers only inches from a brass doorknob that was green with age. “Ernie?”

  Oh right. Miss prim and proper would want me to call him by his full name, Ernest Smith. Now, Jillybean was covered head to toe in goosebumps and she gave one of those tremendous full-body spasms. It made Eve laugh and there was just a hint of rustling crow-feather in it.

  “You can’t talk to him, Eve,” she whispered, speaking so quickly that her words ran into each other without a break. “Okay? Please don’t. Promise me that you won’t. He’s dangerous, Eve. He’ll destroy both of us. Is that what you want? Is it?”

  You know what I want. And if you’ll just give it to me, you won’t have to worry about Ernie ever again. She wanted Jillybean to go away. She wanted to take over their body permanently. She wanted to finally be alive.

  “No! You can’t have my body, and do you know why? Because you are worse than Ernest. The only thing he wants is revenge. He’ll worm his way in with his sweet talk and his fake friendship and then, when the time is right, he’ll set you up. He’ll destroy both of us and as bad as that is, I know you’ll be worse for the entire world. It’s almost as if you want to…”

  “Your Highness?” It was Shaina Hale, speaking in a bleary voice from the other side of the door. “Are you up?”

  For the moment, Eve was gone. Jillybean’s insides felt empty save for the faint echo of rustling feathers. “Y-Yes, I am. Just a moment, okay?” She had to take a few breaths to get herself under a control. It took an exhausted Shaina even longer. She had been sleeping in front of the door, wrapped in a polka-dotted blanket. Now, she looked trapped in it and was trying to kick her way out.

  Unbelievably, she apologized. “You’re sorry for what?” Jillybean asked, with a sinking feeling. “Did I make you sleep here?”

  “No, that’s what I wanted to say sorry about. You told me to guard the door, but I fell asleep. I didn’t mean it, I swear. I was just so tired from everything. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Hold on. You’re sitting on part of the blanket.” She helped free Shaina and took her by the shoulders and led her to the still warm bed. “I need you to get some sleep. No, don’t argue.”

  Shaina looked stunned that her personal hero was letting her sleep in her bed and when she touched the pillow, she did so reverentially as if it had been hand-stitched from the Shroud of Turin. Jillybean even went so far as to tuck her in like she was a toddler, saying, “Don’t get up until I send someone for you, got it?”

  Once Jillybean shut the door and was halfway down the stairs, she muttered, “You’re a bitch, Eve. The only person she had to guard me against is you.”

  And Ernie. Don’t forget about him.

  Jillybean, who didn’t think she would ever forget about him, wondered briefly why he had suddenly emerged inside of her head. It was a frightening scenario, mixing Eve’s chaotic evil with his masterful slyness. Jillybean was afra
id what the consequences would be. She was afraid that when she stepped out of the house, she would find the tiny island half-destroyed and covered with bodies.

  Quite the opposite confronted her. Instead of sadness and misery, she found people going here and there in a surprisingly pleasant mood. All were armed and although most were tired, they weren’t beaten down or timid. When they saw Jillybean, they became animated and cheerful.

  Some even reached out to touch her and most made a gesture in respect to her royal status. Since there were many more women than men, Jillybean received a good deal more curtseys than bows.

  “You really thumped them good,” an older man yelled out. She recognized him as the crotchety harbor master from Alcatraz. She had no idea what he was talking about, but smiled at him, nonetheless.

  Had Eve hit someone with a baseball bat? The question had just sprung to mind when the road took the slope of the hill to the left and she saw the causeway in full daylight. It was covered in dead bodies while above it flew a blizzard of gulls in a wheeling mass.

  “That’ll teach them to mess with the Queen!” the harbor master roared. He was so obnoxiously loud that she snuck a peek at him to see if he was drunk; he was, but not in the traditional sense. There was a spell of euphoria over him and almost all of those present. By every right they should have been dead.

  The Corsairs should have won. They should have been feasting, looting, raping, and torturing to their bloody heart’s content. Instead, the great majority of them were floating like garbage in the bay, or littering the rocky shores of the island or laying in piles all over the causeway. Those that were left alive had either fled north to suffer the Black Captain’s wrath or were hiding in scattered little groups around the bay, afraid to come out and afraid to stay put.