GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  That didn’t stop them from leaning from what windows they could and shooting at the ship, though with very little effect. It wasn’t just the hard angle that conspired against them or the dark night, there was also a thick, winter-bare tree that rose up, wide and tall, against the building. It made accurate shots impossible. Bark and branches flew, but only a scant few bullets got through.

  One scorched across Stu’s bandaged arm after a ricocheting passage. He glared at the welling blood before slipping from the boat to crouch among the rocks. The wound was little more than a scratch and the pain from it was only a nuisance, yet it set his teeth on edge. It rekindled his anger and with blood rushing in his ears, he climbed up past the guard tower and the feasting zombies.

  The anger was so fierce that he almost came close to giving away his only advantage—the thermal scope—and marching directly into the guard’s quarters like an old west gunslinger. Almost. The allure to slay without thought was very strong in him.

  A short scream of pain from within the Tempest killed the thought and reminded him that he had a duty that went beyond revenge. The Corsairs in the guard’s quarters would have to wait. He turned towards the apartment building, where the smoke from the mega smoke bombs floating just off shore was piling up thicker and higher.

  Ducking into the cloud, he found the remains of a forklift to rest the barrel of his M4 on, aimed low and left at one of the Corsairs standing in a window, and fired. The bullet, a bright line in his scope, whizzed harmlessly past the unsuspecting man. As Stu corrected his aim, the man jerked around as if he thought someone was sneaking up on him. Stu fired a second time, dropping him like a stone.

  After he killed his third Corsair, the sudden realization that they were being targeted swept the building. “It’s happening! They’re attacking! Everyone to building one!” The shouts carried easily to Stu, as did the sound of running feet and the curses and collisions as people tried to navigate the smoke.

  He killed more of them as they converged on the building from all over the small island. There was a great deal of confusion and an even greater amount of stupidity on display. They called out to each other almost as if the smoke hindered their hearing as much as their eyesight. One leader in particular, a man with a growly, drill sergeant’s voice, barked orders, laying out their plans of attack for all to hear.

  He was being so loud and utterly foolish that Stu wondered if he was being tricked. Then, just as the plan had been described, a barrage began in the front of the building, while two different groups went around on either side in a pincer movement.

  The cover fire rippled so far above Stu’s head that he ignored it altogether as he watched through his scope as one squad of five men groped blindly around the corner of the building. He waited until they were out in the open, with nothing protecting them but smoke. Without emotion, Stu mowed them down. They never knew what hit them. Then, with horrible predictability, the second group came around the other side of the building.

  Only one of these escaped, dragging his wounded leg behind him. Stu would have killed him too had it not been for a little tickle of a shame at the ease in which he had killed his fellow man. Although these were Corsairs and thus the epitome of evil, Stu was not. Foolishly, he even gave them fair warning.

  “Surrender! We have you surrounded.” It seemed at least partially true. With the almost magical power of the thermal scope, he could see the Rapier not more than a hundred yards away, canted well over, right up against the seawall and beyond it was the Red Pill heading for the tip of the island.

  It was a fair, but incorrect assumption that the two boats were landing north of the dock because of the wind and meant to stage their assault from that direction. Stu felt that if the landings weren’t too mishandled, the attack would be a one-two punch that would leave the Corsairs caught helplessly between two fires.

  “Who you are with?” a tremulous voice cried. “We’re with the Black Captain! If you guys are Coos Bay, then you better think this over. The Captain will descend like an avenging demon on that crap town of yours and slaughter everyone. It’s not too late to save them.”

  “I’m with the Queen of the Bay.” He meant Jenn Lockhart. Although he had been party to her kidnapping, he firmly believed she would make a good, if simple queen. In his mind, being simple, was not a put-down. The world needed things to be simple and obvious.

  “There’s a queen?”

  “Yes, the woman who kicked your ass all day yesterday and who is kicking your ass tonight.” Technically, this was a lie but these were Corsairs, they deserved nothing but lies and scorn. He was about to mention that his “company” were all armed with special night scopes, when a dozen or so guns opened up, aiming for his voice.

  Stu winced and hissed as more bullets plowed furrows through his flesh. None were mortal wounds and certainly none were worse than the wound in his left bicep which felt like it was seeping acid into his arm bone. Still, they hurt and they pissed him off.

  “Forget the warning,” he growled to himself. “Let them die.” He didn’t know what they were going to do with a bunch of prisoners anyway. They were too dangerous to keep imprisoned and doubly dangerous to let go. It made sense to slaughter them.

  With blood trickling from a laceration on his neck, another beneath his left arm and a third on his right calf, he popped up from behind a barrel, aimed and squeezed off three shots—killing one man and wounding another— before dropping down to the sound of a drum beat coming from the barrel.

  These were surprisingly good shots for people without true aiming points. This time, instead of moving before firing, he threw one of his spent magazines off to his left. A stream of bullets, like eager wasps, chased after it. One actually hit it, he could tell by the odd clank it made. Two more Corsairs paid with their lives for falling for the trick.

  Immediately, Stu ducked again and felt the soft caresses of near misses.

  Even though their ranks had begun to thin, the Corsairs were not afraid. It was becoming obvious to them that Stu was alone. They pressed their advantage in numbers and fired as if they had a never-ending supply of bullets. They knew that all it would take was one bullet and they couldn’t keep missing him. Even with the smoke, staying alive was fast becoming a statistical impossibility, especially as they began to pay closer attention to the sound their bullets made as they struck the steel drum or the concrete or the old crane that sat near the dock.

  They no longer shot over his head and it was quickly becoming difficult just to get a shot off.

  After a minute, Stu was basically trapped beneath the crane, when he heard the growly-voiced leader yelling through the din of the battle. They were going to try another pincer-like maneuver and this time Stu didn’t think he’d be able to stop them.

  About the only thing he could do was sell his life for a stiff price—or so he thought. But as he went to stand up, he heard something behind him. For just a moment, he thought that maybe Manny or Nathan had finally manned-up and was joining the fight. The spike of excitement died when he heard the first moan.

  The undead were coming.

  Chapter 26

  Stu Currans

  Stu froze, holding his breath, a prayer caught up in his throat as three great beasts, their massive shoulders and huge heads lost in the smoke, stomped past, swirling the darkness around them. The three broke upon the Corsairs without warning and tore into them, ruthlessly rending them into horrid, bloody chunks.

  It was an unstoppable onslaught which came as an utter surprise that had some men cowering and others flat out running. Stu was not immune to the overwhelming fear. Even with his trusty scope, it was harrowing to be alone in the dense smoke with the towering beasts and the shrieking Corsairs.

  The swirling ebony madness and the ghost-like figures that appeared in flashes, were more than something out of a nightmare. It came from a place that was beyond a lunatic’s imagination and all he could do was hide beneath the crane, clutching himself as gun blasts and
terrifying growls came to him from every direction.

  The smoke made the undead seem far bigger than they really were. To Stu, they were immense, hulking giants that could never fully be seen. Like icebergs on a foggy night, the zombies’ presence could only be felt looming. A huge hand would suddenly appear and rake the smoke, or tree trunk-sized legs would stride past.

  If someone was unlucky enough to see more, it would be in the second before their inevitable death. The zombies weren’t just giants, it was almost as if they were invincible giants. Bullets did nothing to slow them as they came streaming through the smoke to kill and kill.

  In no time, a great panic swept the Corsairs and they fled from the undead, but in the confusion of the smoke, both the men and beasts lost their way. The battle disintegrated into an unholy blood-bath and for long, dreadful minutes, shivers of fear raced through Stu as he huddled in a ball, waiting for his turn to die.

  Finally, the last of the Corsairs found their way out of the smoke and ran for the prison, chased by the dead—most of the men made it. Those that didn’t were eaten in full view of the rest.

  Once the Corsairs were inside the building of metal and stone, the tables were turned. The men raced to the windows, punched out the glass and destroyed the zombies, shredding them to pieces in a hail of bullets.

  Stu watched the death of the zombies with his heart racing, and only gradually got himself under control. Despite his reputation for bravery, he always felt some fear when being hunted by the dead, but what he’d just experienced was terror magnified out of all proportion and he was more than a little embarrassed at his reaction. He even laughed at himself.

  “If Gerry had seen that, I’d never hear the end of it.”

  Although the laugh had been hollow and somewhat forced, he was able to eventually look upon the three dead zombies with complete satisfaction. They had been an unlooked-for gift and had made an attack on the prison much more likely to succeed.

  At first glance, it seemed like insanity to assault the fortress-like prison now that the Corsairs were riled up and ready. Very little smoke had made it this far up the hill and what had was more of a soft, curling haze that hovered in patchy little pools a couple of feet from the ground. He would have to crawl from pool to pool and pray that a stray wind wouldn’t come by and sweep away his cover; if it did, he would die a quick death.

  Worse than the patchy smoke was the fact that the twenty-odd Corsairs who were left were gathered at the most obvious egress points, as well as some of the less obvious ones. They were waiting to kill him. Stu could see their heat signatures through his scope. Yes, his pack fairly bulged with more smoke bombs but what good would they do if the Corsairs had their weapons trained on the doorways. The smoke wouldn’t make him bullet proof.

  Still, he had his advantages. The scope, for one, and for two, he had a nearly endless supply of ammo. As he had followed the zombies and the fleeing Corsairs to the prison, he had paused to scavenge among the dead for more magazines. As there were bodies everywhere, he found enough ammo to kill everyone left in the prison five times over.

  He also had Mike and the crews of both the Rapier and the Red Pill on his side. Currently, they were fighting on the northern tip of the island, but judging from the sound of the firing, the battle was wholly one-sided. Stu guessed that it would be only a matter of minutes before Mike had thirty fighters in position to attack the prison. The Corsairs wouldn’t be able to ignore two platoons of fighters and in the mayhem, Stu and his fancy scope would rip them apart.

  “The Corsairs don’t stand a chance,” he told himself. “I just have to get inside without them knowing.”

  Unfortunately for the Corsairs, Stu knew every building on the island inside and out. Keeping low, he slipped around the side of the prison towards one of the weed-choked pipes that routed excess rainwater from the dilapidated northern section of the wall.

  The roof of the prison had been leaking like a sieve for years and to keep the place from flooding entirely Gerry the Greek had put in a good-sized pipe that had once stretched from the wall all the way to the bay. It was a clay pipe and was very brittle. A few summers before, a large section of the protruding pipe had snapped off while six teenage boys had been showing off their balancing skills; Mike Gunter had been one of these and received a thump on the head and a particularly bad scratch on his arm which had left a proud scar.

  Since then, more of the pipe had crumbled away until it was only a stump with jagged, teeth-like edges. It was too small for any modern zombie to get through, so it had been left unblocked and since it led to the dank, sewer-smelling basement, Stu figured it was almost certainly unguarded.

  To disguise his intentions, Stu lit one of his smoke bombs and tried to heave it as far as he could towards where the irregularly shaped prison jutted inward, then narrowed. There was an angle there that was of no special importance, though once the smoke was billowing within it, he hoped that the Corsairs would suspect there was.

  The plan, simple as it was, did not take into account the sudden wave of dizziness that hit Stu at the end of the throw. He couldn’t check his momentum and ended up spinning in a cock-wobble of a circle before meeting the earth with enough force to knock the wind out of himself.

  “What the hell was that?” he growled when he could breathe. He hadn’t been active enough that night or that entire day to warrant what he considered an inexcusable failure on the part of his body. It had let him down and now the smoke was billowing uselessly thirty feet away.

  If anything, it was worse than useless because it called attention to the broken pipe. His plan had been to wait until the smoke cloud had grown to about the size of a mobile home. Now, he couldn’t wait a second. Thrusting himself up, he dashed for the wall of the prison with bullets trailing after him, kicking up pebbles and little dashes of dust.

  When he got to the wall, he threw his back to it and panted raggedly; his legs were weak, the long bones within them felt hollow. It was something of a relief when he ducked into the pipe where he lay, a trickle of blood mingling with a long, thin pool of stagnant, black water.

  “This is…this is…” He was suddenly so weak that he couldn’t finish his sentence. It was no secret what was wrong. He had lost so much blood that he couldn’t afford to lose even that trickle. His veins were slack and his heartbeat only a faint little echo in its once vital inner chamber.

  Amazingly, he didn’t know if he could go on. Sleep sounded so much better. It seemed to him that if he could just close his eyes and rest his head in the crook of his arm, everything would be so much better, so much easier. Overcome, his eyes drooping, he did just that.

  It was only a second later that he hissed, “Ow!” and jerked up to thump his head on the top of the pipe. An acid flare of pain had shot through his injured arm. He gazed with slow eyes at it as it gradually went numb. It was an unnatural and unpleasant feeling, as if, not only would his arm never regain feeling, but also that the numbness would spread throughout his entire being until it blotted out every other sensation.

  Maybe Jillybean can fix it. The unwanted thought was accompanied by her image and he found himself hypnotized by the memory of her eyes which were the astonishing blue of a mountain sky. He stared into nothing, picturing her until his mind started to grow torpid once more.

  With a harsh growl, he shook his head to clear it and began crawling forward. The pain in his arm flared with every inch, but that was more than okay with him. The pain drove the sleepiness away, but it was never altogether banished. It hung somewhere in the darkness, lurking, ready to invade his mind the moment he slowed to rest.

  The pain also kept his anger burning. Anger towards the Corsairs and towards Jillybean. She deserved so much more than the pitiful little embers of his hatred, but it was the only thing he could guarantee; it was the only thing he had control of any longer.

  Bristling and leaving behind a brackish trail of blood, he crawled into the bowels of the prison where the darkness was many
layers deep and very old. Stu could remember the first time he’d explored what everyone had called the “dungeons” by the timid light of a candle. It had been almost a decade since he had been a scrawny boy of eleven and looking to prove his toughness.

  He’d gone in, dared on by a young One-Shot Saul, who’d had the unsightly habit of rummaging in his underwear as if looking for something lost or perhaps to make sure his parts weren’t becoming unjoined from his body.

  Stu had gone in despite the gleeful whispers from the older teens of ghosts and haints. And he had gone in with one candle and three matches, all of which went unused until he was at the very lowest level where there wasn’t a spit of light. When he did use the candle, the tiny flame only seemed to create more and deeper shadows. It also opened up his vision to the most frightening place he’d ever seen and if ever a place was haunted, that dank, slime-stoned dungeon beneath one of the most infamous prisons ever built was it.

  But Stu hadn’t believed in ghosts then and he didn’t believe in them now as he spilled out of the pipe as if being reborn into the ninth level of hell.

  As he knew it would, the pipe opened into what had once been a furnace room. It was perfectly dark and no matter how much he strained his eyes, he couldn’t see anything besides strange purple blobs and motes of nothingness.

  The thermal scope helped very little. The device was designed to outline and enhance the patterns and shapes within its view by way of contrasting temperature differences. The room, located deep within the “rock,” was so insulated that there was virtually no difference in the temperature of anything. Squinting into the scope gave him a blank view except for a squat, uncertain smudge to his right and two distorted lines running near the low hanging ceiling.

  Stu didn’t need much more than this to know where he was and in which direction he needed to go. Reaching out, he felt the “smudge.” It was the furnace—a gaping, jawed monster, created from pig-iron and stinking of bunker oil. The first time that eleven-year-old Stu had seen the furnace by the puny light of his lone candle, he had sucked in his breath and had to will his feet not to run. Its coal door had been open wide enough to swallow him and he had been able to see inside, where a half-burnt tennis shoe sat in a four-inch deep bed of ash.