GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  Their only other choice would doom his ship.

  With a sigh, Mike pointed to the very northwestern tip of the island where the smoke was being edged back from the rocky seawall by the tired wind. There was no landing point, no docks, and no beach. The craggy face of a short cliff rose right up out of the water.

  “What’s the depth of the water?” Leney asked, a hopeful, begging quality to his voice. Mike held up five fingers, causing Leney’s face to fall—with the cabins packed and an unknown number of holes below the water line, the Red Pill was riding very low. The bottom of the keel was probably eight or nine feet down.

  They would run aground, pitch left or right, and then flounder as thirty-five panicked people rushed up the single set of stairs. People would die if things got out of hand.

  Suddenly, the heady feeling of command was gone. Mike turned the boat toward that last bit of visible land, aiming her square at the cliff face. As if the wind was conspiring against the Red Pill, they were able to pick up just enough speed that when they ran aground against the rocks hidden beneath the water, everyone was thrown forward. Then, just as Mike had imagined, the boat began to pitch slowly to port, while from below there came a whispered cry and the sound of charging feet. Mike stopped them from coming all the way up.

  “Guns!” he tried to yell. Many of them were empty-handed. He turned to Colleen. “Only people with guns.” She nodded and began hissing at those without weapons to turn around. “We have time,” she told them, just as a wave picked up the boat and hurled it another ten feet onto more rocks.

  There was a crash midship and in the stunned silence, the sound of spraying water could be heard. In seconds, it was smothered by piercing screams. The fear of being trapped in the over-crowded cabin of a sinking boat was too much and there was a great rush for the stairs.

  Someone had to take command and order the evacuation properly; unfortunately, Colleen had tumbled practically off the boat when they crashed, Leney was already at the bow looking to jump overboard, and Mike was basically mute—but Rebecca wasn’t!

  Mike grabbed her and planted her squarely on the stairs. “Guns and ammo,” he rasped into her ear.

  Rebecca, although wide through the hips and with a swimmer’s set of shoulders, was still weak from the illness Jillybean had cured her of a few days before. Had it not been for the next wave that took the Red Pill, she wouldn’t have been able to stem the tide of people desperately trying to evacuate the hold.

  That wave lifted the bow and spun the stern, sending everyone flying. Rebecca was first to her feet. “Guns! Grab your guns and ammo! Come on, those with guns get up here, quick!”

  Between the waves there was a lull of a few seconds in which the ocean seemed to gather its strength before picking the boat up again. Even though the swell and the waves had seemed almost inconsequential out on the bay, their shocking power was revealed when the third wave hit the boat. The Red Pill was thrown onto its side, sending a handful of people into the water and snapping the mast off as it were nothing more than a twig.

  Mike was one of those flung overboard, although in his case he saw it coming just before the wave hit. He came spluttering up just as another wave hurled him right at a spire of rock which he hit hard but managed to hold on, although all the rocks were covered in a green sheen of slime that was slippery as hell.

  Using the strap of his rifle, he tied himself to the spire. “Make a chain!” he cried, feeling something tear in his throat. The pain that hissed inside of him had to be ignored. “Cut away the lines from the sail and make a chain.”

  The next wave hit seconds later and he had to duck into it to keep from being crushed by its weight. When he came up, he saw a body rushing past. Instinctively, he grabbed it and found himself clutching a bedraggled and half-drowned Colleen White.

  “Hold on!” he yelled as the receding water nearly pulled her from his grip. Already a half a dozen people were being swept away from the rocks, which seemed like a good thing and yet, every minute spent in the water was a minute closer to death.

  Mike endured more punishment clinging to the rock, but he stayed until a rope was passed to him. Once it was tied off, he fought the waves to the next rock and tied another length of rope. Going hand over fist along the rope, Colleen followed him and handed him the next rope.

  Soon he had a continuous chain of rope running from the boat to the cliff-face where the water slapped and sprayed in white foam. Amazingly, he saw his entire crew, including the additions from the Rapier, clawing along the rope like drenched spiders. He hadn’t lost a single person…yet.

  The last obstacle was the cliff itself. Mike’s throat was killing him and he wished he could turn this last stage over to someone else, however, when he looked back, he saw his crew was barely surviving in the pounding surf and if he hesitated any longer he would surely lose one or two.

  With his rifle slung across his back and a circle of rope over his shoulder, he began climbing. What would have been an easy climb on a warm summer day was a hundred times more difficult in that dark winter night. He was dragged down by the weight of his weapon and gear, and what felt like an extra twenty pounds of water saturating his sopping wet clothes. Very quickly his arms were leaden and his fingers were numb from the cold.

  The blood trickling down into his lungs gave him a weak cough that only made it that much harder to keep from falling. Had the climb been even three feet higher, he probably wouldn’t have made it.

  Gasping and trembling, he made it to the top and, as much as he wanted to lie there for a few minutes, there was no time to rest. He immediately unlimbered the rifle and, with a quick prayer that it would “Please, please, work,” he flicked on the low-light scope.

  Everything showed up just like it should in the familiar grey scale. Under normal conditions, he would’ve been able to see a man at two hundred yards. With the smoke forming a complete wall, he could barely see thirty and he thanked God for that. The little bluff overlooking the bay was wide open and had there been even a single guard, Mike would’ve made a pathetically easy target.

  Unfortunately, there was a counterbalance to Mike’s good luck; judging from the fantastic number of gunshots coming from the other end of the island, Stu and his crew were battling all of the Corsairs at once.

  Fearing that Stu couldn’t hold out even with the thermal scope, Mike climbed to his feet and staggered to a sagging, rusted-over fence that had been put up years before to keep people from accidentally falling off the cliff. He tied off one end of the rope; the other end he tossed down to Leney, who had already begun scrabbling up the side of the cliff but seemed to be stuck.

  Leney’s tattooed face was a livid purple by the time he got to the top, where he immediately rolled to his back and lay there panting. Mike kicked him and whispered, “Come on.”

  Colleen was next on the rope. Even with it, she moved so slowly and laboriously, that a line formed behind her. Together, Mike and Leney pulled her up. Then came Rebecca, who was only marginally stronger, and so on. After the tenth person was pulled to safety, Mike gave up his spot on the rope.

  The battle to the southeast was raging. He had to help. “Okay, I need volunteers to…” Mike choked on his words as he realized that of the ten people on the top of the cliff only he had managed to keep hold of his gun during the sinking, the swim and the climb. “I need a second,” he said. “Someone to take over, in case I…you know, get killed or something.”

  Leney snorted, which was to be expected. Rebecca lifted a wavering hand; there was blood under her nails, and more leaking from her dark hair. She must’ve hit one of the rocks coming off the boat; she was in no shape to fight. In fact, no one who’d made it to the top looked ready for another battle. They were all battered and bruised and lethargic.

  “Don’t get up,” Mike told Rebecca. “You’re hurt. I’ll find someone else.” His eyes roved quickly past Colleen, who had sat up with a tired smile and a frightened, pinched look. He squinted down at the rest of his
crew strung out in a thin line that went from the base of the cliff to the wallowing Red Pill.

  The scope wasn’t needed to see that only six of them still had hold of weapons and, although the seas had calmed slightly in the last few minutes, he could hear their tired curses and soft moans as they struggled on. They were weak and whatever strength they had left was being sapped by the ocean.

  By the time they got up, they’d be little use to anyone. This put the responsibility of saving Stu squarely on Mike’s young shoulders.

  “Maybe,” he said as he passed a shaking hand over his face. “Maybe the surprise of coming in from behind might be enough.” He stood, took a deep breath and set his face toward the black wall of smoke. Just like Stu, he would go in alone.

  Before he could take that first step, a cry from the water stopped him.

  “What was that?” a woman cried out, her voice cutting across the waves and the surf, and the boat being ground to pieces. Mike spun around just as she screamed, “I felt something!”

  There wasn’t much to see. The people were little more than dark forms against a dark sea; the rocks were shadowy humps; the black boat, a strange flat mass across the water.

  It was the terror that rent the air which made Mike put the Starlight scope to his eye. Behind the last women in line was a huge, white, glowing figure just under the water. Beyond it were fifty more. Called by the scream, zombies were sweeping in on the waves.

  Chapter 24

  Mike Gunter

  Claudia Stephens was that last person. Mike knew only two things about her: she was one of the people they’d picked up in Sacramento, and she was utterly without luck. She’d been the last person from the Rapier they had fished out of the water, and she had been the last person to make it out of the Red Pill. Now she was struggling just to remain upright as the surging waves began to grow again.

  Mike wanted to scream at her to move as the immense, fish-belly white zombie came up out of the water with a terrifying roar. One moment she was framed in perfect terror beneath the towering beast and in the next, she had disappeared as the monster slammed his full weight down on her, sending up a fountain of water ten feet high.

  “Run!” Mike screamed to the others in line, and this time he was certain something tore in his throat. His scream was lost in the panic as everyone rushed helter-skelter for the single rope. The water frothed as the weakest among them were trampled or pushed aside, and the general madness only spurred the zombies to greater efforts to get at the fleeing people.

  Weapons were all but forgotten, except for Mike’s. He tried to take a steadying breath before shooting at the zombie but ended up hacking up blood. Ignoring it, he took a desperate shot at the zombie that had crushed Claudia and ended up missing by ten feet. He decided to hold his breath as he lined up a second shot—and missed again!

  It was the wonky bullets; he had forgotten all about them. He tried to correct his aim but still missed what should have been an easy head shot from thirty yards. The bullet plowed a useless hole in the creature’s coffee table-width shoulder.

  It had been bent over with its face in the water, but as if the bullet was a tap on its shoulder, it straightened with a body gripped in both hands. With another roar, it threw it against one of the spire-like rocks spearing up out of the water. Only when the body crunched against the rock did Mike realize that it wasn’t a body at all, but a tree trunk.

  A second later, Claudia popped up out of the water next to the beast, more dazed than conscious. She stared up at it with eyes that looked incapable of comprehension; they were the torpid, dull-witted eyes of someone pulled from the deepest of sleep during a long, drawn-out nightmare.

  It seemed to take forever before she realized what was going on, and when she did, she turned and sloshed back toward the boat. It was the wrong way; she was heading into deeper water and toward even more danger! And worse, it was a tragically slow getaway. The waves and the hidden rocks had her toiling just to get beyond the long reach of the zombie.

  But it had a very long reach. It stretched out a huge grey arm just as Mike shot a third time, aiming at the thing’s bloody shoulder, guessing that the bullet would behave just like the last two had. His aim was off by a foot this time, but Claudia lucked out as the creature turned just as he fired. The bullet smacked into its temple and turned what was left of the thing’s brain into a black stew that blasted out the other side of its head.

  An electric spasm ran through the zombie. It jerked rigidly up to its full height, stood stock-still for a moment before falling over with majestic slowness, sending up such a tremendous splash that it created its own wave which bowled Claudia over.

  Without looking back at the dead creature, she struggled to her feet among the rocks and began to plod slowly away, again toward the sailboat and again toward more danger. The other zombies were now close enough to be seen without the scope. Everyone on the cliff began screaming and yelling: “Turn around. Come back! Come back!” While everyone in the water had their panic renewed and surged with even greater vigor at the one rope. They yelled: “Pull us up! Pull us up!”

  With a dozen hands grasping and clinging to the rope with all their might, pulling it up was impossible. Only one man made it to the top before the rope snapped, piling another ten in a terrible, suffocating jumble at the base of the cliff. There was no telling how many people would have drowned if a heavy wave hadn’t plowed into the mass, lifting and separating them.

  The same wave also sucked three people away from the island. Two of them recognized their danger and fought the surf with great determination. The third, the unfortunate Claudia who had finally turned around, had barely enough strength to keep her head above water and her pitiful cries of, “Don’t leave me,” were a knife in Mike’s heart.

  He began firing at the closest zombie, a slag-faced beast that had been in the bay so long that its flesh was dripping from its bones. Its cheeks drooped so low that they swung like strange flaps from its chin and the bags beneath its eyes were literal bags that held little pops of seawater.

  Mike’s fourth shot destroyed one of those pouches which didn’t slow the thing in the least.

  “Who the hell taught you how to shoot?” Leney asked in disgust. “Your form stinks. Give me that.” Mike tried to turn his head, however the pain in his throat wouldn’t let him, and before he knew it, Leney had snatched the gun from his hands.

  “Wait…” Mike said in his harsh whisper with his hands up. There was no doubt in his mind that Leney wouldn’t take advantage of the situation. He had the only gun on the top of the cliff and could have taken them all prisoner. But he didn’t.

  He put the gun to his shoulder, aimed for what seemed like forever, and fired, hitting the zombie on the top of the forehead. Even before it fell, Leney was sizing up the next. It took him two shots, which had him spitting curses and excuses: “It’s these damned bullets.”

  Leney started to look back down the scope when his shoulders twitched. It was all the warning Mike had as Leney swung the gun around. The barrel didn’t quite make it as Leney felt the point of Mike’s knife against his neck.

  “Give it to me,” Mike said, pressing the point deeper, dimpling Leney’s flesh almost to the point of drawing blood.

  “You know this whole thing is stupid,” Leney replied as he held out the gun. “Even if you take this hunk of rock, you can’t beat the Black Captain. Not with a crazy girl as your queen. But with a king,” he paused and with a quick glance down the length of the cliff. “But with a king, it might work. You could be that…”

  Mike had heard enough. “Shut up. And step back.” He took a measured breath, held it and fired. The bullet took the ear off the next closest zombie to Claudia, who was pushing through the water as if it were cold molasses. Although the M4 had very little kick, it still hurt to shoot it.

  I’m flinching, he thought to himself. You know better. He also knew that he was no great marksman and the Corsair bullets didn’t help. Still, which of t
he others was any better? No one. He fired and hit the creature in the throat almost in the same place as his own wound. It wasn’t good enough.

  A cough, a sigh, an eye to the Starlight scope, a touch of elevation and this shot blasted into the pumpkin-sized head. Repeating the steps exactly did not produce the same result. Another miss and Claudia’s situation went from desperate to hopeless.

  Now there were three zombies thrashing through the water to get at her, leaving Mike no time to take carefully aimed shots. He fired without letup, killing the first beast with three shots, the second with four and the third with two. His ears rang and his throat ached and yet he grinned as he searched for Claudia among the glowing figures.

  She was nowhere to be seen. He grunted a question. Leney answered, “The idiot went under the sail.”

  Sadly, “idiot” was appropriate. Instead of heading to the cliff where Rebecca had managed to gain some control over the panicked people, Claudia had done nothing except trap herself. There were zombies all around the boat and it was only a matter of time before the surf picked up and destroyed it completely. If the pounding waves didn’t kill her, the zombies would.

  With so many others in danger, Mike couldn’t waste any more time and bullets on her. “Help them!” he ordered Leney, as he bent back over the rifle. Mike’s world narrowed as he concentrated fully on the zombies that were converging on his crew.

  Somehow Rebecca had re-instilled some amount of humanity back into the crew and they were finally using their heads. As some people made the climb unassisted, others were boosted practically to the top by way of a human pyramid. The biggest five men formed the base and the next level was made up of the three sturdiest women.

  It was only nine feet to the top from there and with the remains of the rope, people were dragged up one by one. The entire process was handled as efficiently as possible, but it was still too slow. The zombies came slogging up in ones and twos and it was up to Mike to hold them back with only little bits of puzzled metal that never flew straight.