GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  “As long as we have the wind on our side we can’t fail. I need fifteen volunteers to come with me in the lead boat.” Stu’s worst fear: that no one would want to go in the lead boat was partially realized. Only Aaron Altman raised his hand—his one hand. He waved it so aggressively that it shamed a few others into lifting theirs.

  “Really?” Stu demanded. “Is that it? Nathan!”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, you just volunteered. Manny!”

  Manny looked around blearily. “Huh? Yes?”

  Stu grinned. “Both of you get over here. Now who else wants to do the honorable thing and step up?” He got his fifteen. They weren’t great. They were, more or less fifteen warm bodies; and whole bodies. “Sorry, Aaron, there’s only room for one of us on this mission.” Stu pointed to his left arm, which was not just in a sling, but also trussed tightly against his ribs. He couldn’t even bring himself to put Aaron or Shaina on Rebecca’s boat. Her boat was filled with what he considered to be “less than” fighters, since her main job was only to add a third platform for the smoke screen. The smoke had to be as thick, wide and deep as possible.

  Once the crews of the three boats were divided, Stu wished the other captains, “Good luck,” and stepped aboard the Tempest.

  Dustin sized him up. “You know this is ridiculous. The wind’s been shifting all night. Anything could happen. We could be left stranded, the smoke might…”

  “Just get us north of the island. All I need is a few minutes.”

  “I? Are you going to be doing the shooting? You got one scope and you’re the one doing the shooting? What the hell?”

  Stu bent his head to his injured arm and pulled the knot holding it in place with his teeth. Pain flared like a line of acid in his bicep. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grimacing. “I’ll be fine, just get us out there.”

  Dustin cursed under his breath before raising his voice to a mutter and issuing a string of orders. A forty-foot boat was big for three people; with twenty-one on board it became very cramped, especially on deck. Dustin tried to order everyone but Stu to go below. Stu laughed at the idea of putting them at the mercy of the ex-Corsair sailors.

  He kept six of his “toughest” fighters on deck. They included a pale and shaking Nathan Kittle and a still tipsy Manny Lopez. Taking a cue from Manny, Stu made sure everyone got at least one slug of his rotgut, which took at least a little of the edge from their fear.

  Stu didn’t need the booze. He wasn’t afraid to die. Death beckoned to him. It called out in a strange mixture of faraway zombie moans, a sighing wind, and the gentle lap of waves. It was a soothing sound that went with his mellow mood.

  What was there to get worked up about? If he died, then his pain would be gone. It was living that filled him with apprehension. What would they do about Jillybean? Would the other Corsairs band together and attack in the morning when they held the advantage? What would the Black Captain do when he finds out that his armada had been obliterated?

  Of course, Stu’s biggest worry was how he would face the next sunrise and the one after that?

  All of these questions made the minutes fly by and just as Manny began to puke over the side of the Tempest, Dustin had them in place, three hundred yards north of Alcatraz.

  “Did Jillybean mention what part of the island she wanted to make the assault on?” he asked Dustin.

  “Jillybean,” Dustin scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Getting captured by a single girl is bad enough, but a girl named ‘Jillybean?’ I’ll never live it down. You might as well shoot me now.” In absolute silence, Stu bored his cool eyes into Dustin’s, until the latter shrugged. “No. She had a wait and see approach. If I was you, I’d go in at the dock. It’s safer on the boats. You know, just in case we need to make a fast get away. If you try anywhere else, I can guarantee we’ll get hung up on the rocks and that’s a best-case scenario.”

  Through the scope, Stu studied the dark island. It was a small rock, rising steeply out of the bay with only a few places where a true amphibious attack could succeed. The dock was one of these spots. Unfortunately, a hundred-foot long building overlooked them. To attack a target of that size would take more than smoke bombs and a single thermal scope. It would take a well-trained and fearless company at his back, something he didn’t have.

  “I should’ve asked her what she was going to do,” he said, to himself.

  The night was quiet enough for Dustin to have heard. “We still can. We have the wind on our stern. We can be back there in half an hour.”

  After the way they had left things? There was no chance she’d tell him. “No. We’ll slip in close and release the big bombs near the dock. If the wind remains out of the north, we’ll wait until the smoke covers the area to attack. If it swings from the west, we should be able to land on the southern part of the island.”

  “And if it dies altogether?”

  “Pray it doesn’t,” Stu grunted. This wasn’t the time for pessimism and stupid questions. He looked through the scope again. From this distance, the few men he could see on the island were ill-defined blobs. There were two in the guard tower; they’d be hard to take out with the funky bullets.

  Lifting the radio, he said, “Light two of the big smokers and follow my lead. We’re releasing as close to the dock as we can. It’ll be our initial point of attack. Get your people on the island as fast as possible and then find a spot to use your Starlight scopes. Any questions?”

  Mike answered with two clicks of the send button. Rebecca took longer to answer with a soft, “No.”

  “We got this,” Stu told them. “They won’t know what hit them. Just make sure you have a second close by.” Just in case you get killed, he didn’t add. His own second was Nathan, who was supposed to be guarding Dustin but was instead edging towards the little set of stairs that led down into the cabins.

  Stu blew a soft whistle and Nathan jerked. “Let’s get two of the big ones lit.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said, walking towards Stu and away from the back of the boat where the heavy-duty smoke bombs were lashed to little rafts and being tugged along behind the boat. “I-I was just thinkin’ that maybe I should stay behind with the others. You know to keep my eyes on the…” He shot a look Dustin’s way and whispered, “Corsairs. Yeah, I-I know you got some people to do that, but they’s all women.” Another whispered word as if being a woman was something to be ashamed of.

  It took a moment for Stu to realize what Nathan was really saying: I’m a coward. Please let me stay here where it’s safe. This so completely boggled Stu’s mind that he could think of nothing to say in reply. He could only look at Nathan in disgust; the look would not leave as he went to the back of the boat and put a muddy boot on the gunwale. Below him in the water was one of the big smoke bombs, floating languidly on its raft. He was about to light it and cut it loose when he saw that the Tempest was still drifting.

  Ignoring Nathan, who was hissing something and standing so closely that he was practically in Stu’s back pocket, he said to Dustin. “What are you waiting for? You heard me. Get us as close to the dock as possible. I want to lay the first in front of the guard tower. Right at its feet. Thirty yards away if you can swing it.”

  “Are you serious?” Dustin replied. It was dark, but there was no mistaking the abject fear on his face.

  Once more, Stu had to pause before answering, “Yes, I am.” Dustin wasn’t the only one afraid. Stu could see down the steps into the crowded cabin where a small host of frightened men and women stared up at him, reminding him again that these weren’t fighters.

  One man had once been a school teacher who liked to paint trees, and one of the women had been the mother of five children, none of whom had lived past the age of six. Three had died in the height of the apocalypse and two during the past ten years. Nathan had been in analytics and taking master’s courses back in the Before; now he spent nights playing guitar with such soft fingers that it couldn’t be heard ten feet away.

&nb
sp; They were all like that: normal people. People who would’ve been considered stolidly average and who were likely perfect neighbors. To them drinking 2% milk might have been the greatest risk they would have dared to take back in the day. Now their fear made them small. It robbed them of what little spirit they had displayed on the docks and Stu didn’t think he’d be able to pry them from out of their hiding place when it came time to fight.

  He turned away with a long sigh. It wasn’t their fault they were like this. Not everyone could be courageous and brave. Or in his case, so apathetic that it closely resembled courage. “Don’t worry,” he said in a general statement to all of them, “I’ll do this. All you guys have to do is the bare minimum. Can you do that, Dustin? Can you run us up close? Once the smoke bombs are going, you’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “Safe? Yeah, right.” He lit a long, ratty cigarette that produced a harsh, blue smoke. In three drags, he smoked it right down to his yellowed fingers. Only then did he whistle twice and up ran the mainsail.

  “Bare minimum?” Nathan asked, with uncertain hope. “What’s that all supposed to mean, exactly? Am I stayin’ with the boat?”

  Stu shrugged and sighed again as it were some sort of persistent ailment. “Do what you want. I’m not the Queen and I’m not the one who’ll have to deal with her anger.” This had a jarring effect on Nathan. He was from Sacramento and had seen Jillybean execute Tony Tibbs and the other three Corsairs. She had been terrifying.

  “But…” he started to say before Stu cut him off.

  “Don’t waste your breath with me, Nathan, because I really don’t care what she does with you.” When he thought of the Queen, he pictured Jillybean and her flashing blue eyes set in her perfectly white face, with her…He shook the image from his head, sighed for what felt like the tenth time in the last minute, and said, “Do what you want. I’ll go alone if I have to.”

  In truth, he wanted to go alone. He didn’t want to see any more housewives with their guts exploded out of them, or computer geeks with their hands shot to bloody stumps, or painters turning the earth red. No, it would be better to go alone. It would be better to die alone.

  “Change of plans,” he said into the radio.

  Chapter 22

  Mike Gunter

  The five Ex-Corsairs on the forty-four foot, Red Pill were a sullen, surly lot who did not like the idea of taking their orders from a mute teenager with a thin “baby beard.” Mike had heard that muttered more than once; it’s what they called him behind his back.

  They had almost no respect for him and even less for the timid, skittish hodgepodge of a squad that he was supposed to lead onto the island. They huddled like a flock of frightened sheep below deck and he was secretly afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get them to come up when the time came. If, by some miracle, he could get them to come ashore, they would undoubtedly wither under heavy fire and become little more than soft targets.

  If Stu was dealing with the same sort of abject fear, Mike couldn’t fault him too terribly for wanting to go alone. It was hard enough going into battle without being a party to useless slaughter. But a one-man suicidal attack was not the answer.

  A better plan was the answer, but they were still following crazy Jillybean. It didn’t matter whether she was locked up or not, she had set this in motion and now they were stuck dealing with the fallout with dwindling resources. With each battle they lost more of the strongest among them until all that was left was a pathetic little group, whispering endless prayers to a dozen different gods.

  It was sad—and yet, Mike’s eyes shone and his smile was the only gleam in the dark night. He was in command of a ship, heading into battle. As terrible as this was, it brought something out of him, something hungry and just a tad evil. A part of him was eager for the clash of guns, the whistle of bullets in the rigging, the moment to moment exaggerated feel of life that only war produced.

  Every second in battle meant he would be within inches of death—and it was wonderful in a terrible, terrible way. Mike had discovered the heady sensation the day before as he raced into the smoke, sandwiched between two over-powering enemies. His death had been almost certain; still he relished the moment and the battle cry that boomed from his throat had just sprung from him, unexpectedly.

  He’d also discovered that land battles could not compare to sea battles. On land, fighting was too static, too unthinking, too plodding.

  Battle on board a sailboat took place in four dimensions. The usual, easily measurable dimensions: height, width, length were always of exaggerated importance on board a sailing ship and added to them was the fluid nature of time. A good captain saw time differently than ordinary people. He had to see into six possible futures at once. He had to know where his boat would be in every possible future. What if he tacked into the wind? Or luffed up? Or let out more sail? What if the wind shifted direction or suddenly gusted heavily? What would he do if he found himself racing towards a half-sunken boat, or in the midst of a swarm of eight-hundred-pound zombies, tearing at his hull?

  And he had to know what his opponents would do in any given circumstance. Would they match his moves? Would they fall off and attempt to rake him? Would they break away and run?

  On top of all that, he had to know everything there was to know about his own boat. What was its best point of sailing? Was a great beard of weeds hanging from its hull, acting like an anchor? Was the rigging rotten and on the verge of snapping? What shape was the mast in, the roving boom, the sails themselves?

  What about the crew? Who was experienced? Who was a second away from panic? Who was ready to mutiny? Who had found their place and was settling solidly into their role despite the danger?

  It was heady stuff to have this all racing through his mind at once, and despite the semi-whispered “Baby Beard” insults and the prayers to Poseidon, for goodness sakes, Mike found himself amped up.

  Then came Stu’s message: “I want everyone to drop all three smokers right on the dock and then hang back. Wait on my word after that. I’m going in first. Alone.”

  “Stu!” he cried as loud as he could, which wasn’t loud at all. His voice was a raspy hiss that got lost in the static of the radio. “Damn it, Stu! Don’t do this!”

  “He can’t hear you,” Leney said. Mark Leney was one of the ex-Corsair “volunteers.” His face was heavily scarred, giving a permanent twist to his lips. To mask the scars, he had gone heavier than usual with the Corsair tattoos, which only made him look twisted and somewhat dirty, especially at night. “Besides, if he wants to go play the hero, I say let him. The world needs more heroes.”

  One of the other ex-Corsairs snorted out a low laugh. Mike ignored them both. He keyed the mic three times and said as clearly as he could,

  “Please come in, Stu. We need a new plan.”

  “Hello, Mike? If you’re saying anything, we can’t hear you,” Rebecca Haigh said, speaking so loudly he could hear her even without the radio. She was at the wheel of the Rapier, which was rising and falling on a gentle swell, only forty feet away.

  She went on, begging, “Stu, you need to rethink this plan. It’s really not a good…aw, crap.”

  The Tempest had just raised her mainsail and two triangular jibs which hung elegantly one on top of the other. The boat swung around and, in seconds, she had caught up all the wind there was to snag and was heading towards the island at a sluggish six knots. Immediately, Mike began snapping his fingers and pointing at the Red Pill’s mainsail.

  “Huh?” Leney asked. “What’s this mean?” He made a show of swishing his hands about and jabbering his mouth up and down. Mike glared, which did nothing but make Leney shiver theatrically. Furiously, Mike aimed his M4 at the man. Leney grinned and said, “You ain’t gonna shoot. It’ll blow your whole deal. No surprise means no attack, right? How ‘bout instead we just scoot on outta here? Your friend ain’t gonna make it no how, so there’s no use us dying too.”

  Leney was right, Mike couldn’t shoot, not yet. He stomp
ed his foot twice and Colleen White appeared from the cabin. She had been a late comer to the crew, lurking in the shadows until Jenn and Jillybean were safely out of the way. She was the very last person he had expected to volunteer to come with him; and that included the weakest and sickest, and even the youngest. He would have been less surprised if seven-year-old Lindy Smith had volunteered and she was never seen without one of a hundred stuffed animals.

  Mike hissed something in her ear that made her eyes go wide.

  “I am to tell you that if the captain’s orders aren’t obeyed, the five of you will be shot in the guts and thrown overboard as soon as the battle starts. I’d do it if I was you. He’s done stuff like that before. Everyone says he’s practically a Corsair like you guys.”

  Being called a Corsair was such a shocking insult that had it not been for the wink she gave Mike, he would have ruined her little scheme by protesting. Catching on, he made a show of swinging the rifle around until it was casually pointed at Leney’s midsection.

  “Fine,” Leney grumbled. “It was just a joke. Can’t you take a joke?”

  Mike demonstrated his lack of humor by aiming the gun properly, though it hurt to crane his head toward the scope. This ended the conversation and the five ex-Corsairs flew about the Red Pill getting the sails up. Mike hated the idea of leaving everything to them, but they were a sly lot and he didn’t dare put himself into a position where he could be grabbed from behind or knocked on the head and have his gun taken.

  He had to stay near the stern and issue orders through Colleen, who held onto him tightly even though the bay was amazingly calm. Her fear radiated out of her, and with every passing second, as the island came slowly closer, her fear grew. He could feel her entire body trembling and, as much as he wanted to console her in some way, he refrained. They were running along the edge of the island now and there was no time for anything but the mission.

  Their initial delay had allowed Rebecca Haigh in the Rapier to surge slightly ahead. The surge had been brief and as the wind died, the boat began toiling through the water. Rebecca was no captain and the ex-Corsairs with her undermined her at every opportunity, hoping to slip further away from the island, and thus danger, without being too obvious.