GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3
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The only way to save Stu was to do the opposite in fact. Mike had to draw the aim of every gun away from Stu and to himself.
“Kill the Corsairs!” he roared at the top of his lungs and began firing. He was able to get off five shots before a hail of bullets drove him back. As he was so much closer, the Corsairs focused everything they had on him. It got so bad that when he stuck his gun around the corner to shoot blindly, the barrel was hit twice, sending such a sharp vibration along the gun that his hands went momentarily numb.
It was just as well. He couldn’t possibly shoot from where he was a second time. The Corsairs had his position dialed in and hot lead zipped past the corner he had ducked behind every other second.
Mike jumped up and ran down the hall, passing cell after cell. The layout of the four cell blocks was an interconnected maze of hallways. There were no dead ends and Mike was hoping to come up behind the smoke—if he could escape down the hallway in time.
He was almost dead certain that someone would come around the corner he had just vacated and shoot him square in the back at any moment. His fear almost became reality five seconds later, but in the dark, the Corsair missed wide, his bullets ringing off the bars of a cell.
Mike threw himself down and to the right, feeling the hot passage of more bullets ripping over his head. He rolled as he landed and, from his stomach, he lined up the glowing crosshairs on his scope with the man and killed him with two shots.
Another Corsair tried to peek around the corner to see what was going on. As the cellblock was bathed in shadows, the man felt safe enough to lean further out than was prudent and Mike had half of his torso as an aiming point. One shot, one kill. Rolling to his side, Mike coughed up blood and spat it out as he changed magazines. His adrenaline was pumping fast and he didn’t notice the blood or the constant cough.
With the new magazine in, he aimed again at the next stupidly curious Corsair. This time he missed as the man ducked back too quickly.
Now, more shooting was coming from the other cell block where Stu was trapped. Mike hurried in the direction he’d been going, turned the corner and came up forty feet behind Stu.
Mike lined up a shot with his scope just as the smoke reached the second level. Although he rushed his shot, he managed to make a head shot that killed a Corsair. A second later he found out the hard way that he wasn’t the only one who could use the maze of hallways around the cellblocks to his advantage. A burst of fire from the next corner had bullets bracketing him; some rippled the air right behind his neck and some blasted into the wall inches from his face and sent a shower of chipped concrete into his eyes.
He let out a cry and turned to fire back, only everything was a black blur punctuated by a kaleidoscope of little golden lights. Mike emptied his magazine with his eyes closed, using the wall he was up against to guide his weapon. The bullets snaked down the length of it, some kicking off and bouncing wide, others started wide and missed everything but the far wall. A good third of them skimmed along the wall until they met the neck of his enemy, where they tore apart flesh until the man’s head hung by a thread.
The meaty thumps could not be mistaken for anything else. Safe for the moment, Mike dropped into a crouch and began to blink just as daintily as he could while changing out his old magazine for a new one in the middle of a fiery battle. Out of his right eye plopped, not a chip or a fleck but what felt like a stone. His left eye was so full of grit he decided that he couldn’t risk another gunfight with it twisting his vision into strangled figure-eights.
After a few seconds, with tears streaming through the dust powdering his face, he chanced a look around the corner. By then A Block was practically filled with black smoke, completely obscuring Stu and pretty much everything else. If Stu was still alive, he was in the position to give the Corsairs a thorough and murderous beating since he had a thermal scope and could use it to see through the clouds.
It didn’t sound like he was alive, however. The only shooting that was occurring was going on at the far end of the cell block and Mike could hear the whisper of the bullets speaking to him as they passed through the smoke in secret. The second they left their guns, only fate knew what path they would take and who would be within that path.
Mike had to chance those paths to get to Stu. He had no choice since he had managed to trap himself in the lion’s den with enemies ranging in every direction except one: the pipe that led beneath the north wall. To get to it also meant going through the smoke and after the last time with Colleen, he was reluctant to do so. Yet, it seemed like fate was forcing his hand.
With a quick sign of the cross, Mike charged in and was immediately struck blind. This was worse than it had been with Colleen; he couldn’t even see his hand pass in front of his face. The darkness was absolute. It was so dark that within ten steps and maybe a dozen near misses as bullets traced lines through the smoke all around him, Mike had lost his way and dashed head first into a set of bars.
There was a hollow-sounding donk and, just as Mike began to fall back, there was a brief piercing flash, like lightning going off within a thundercloud. Something, a bullet Mike later realized, tugged at his jacket just before he landed flat on his bottom in something of a daze.
The gun went off again. It was very close, too close to be one of the Corsairs, who had all been at the far end of the cellblock.
“Stu?”
“Mike? What are you doing here?” His voice was slurry and dull as if Mike had woken him up by knocking his head into the cell door.
The middle of the hall with bullets buzzing back and forth like angry bees was no place for a conversation. He crawled into the cell, his hand slipping in a puddle of blood. “Where are you hit?”
“Places,” was Stu’s uncaring reply. Mike found him in the deepest part of the cell, sitting between a toilet and a bed with his back to the wall. He was completely covered in tacky blood which made it hard to figure out what part of him was whole and what wasn’t.
Stu pushed Mike’s hands away and mentioned, as if in passing, “My gun’s broke.”
Remembering the near miss with a queer twitch, Mike replied, “I don’t think so. Wait, do you mean the scope?” That made sense since it had been a miss and not a direct hit. Stu grunted. “So, what do we do?” Mike asked.
Another grunt.
“Jeeze-louise! We can’t just sit here until the smoke runs out.” The smoke made the battle a stalemate, but when it ran out, Mike would have the upper hand when it came to accuracy while the Corsairs would dominate with total volume of bullets fired. In the end, he knew the Corsairs would kill them both. If they could do that, then they would hold the prison and if they could hold the prison until daybreak, they could hold the island. And if they held the island, they would hold the city and Jenn and everyone were doomed.
Stu knew it as well. “You should run away,” he said, listlessly, as if he was on the verge of passing out. “Take Jenn and run far away. Just tell her before you go that I loved her. Promise me you’ll do it.”
Run away? Was this his only choice? Mike hated the idea, and to have it juxtaposed with a message of love to the crazy girl who started all of this made Stu seem weak.
“Hold on. I can get you out of here and you can say whatever you want to say to Jillybean.”
He groped blindly for Stu and found the sleeve of his bloody coat; it was like grabbing a sponge and for just a second, he pulled his hands back. Stu was dying and the only one who could save him was Jillybean. Mike made a quick calculation of how long it would take to drag him through the depths of the prison, down to the docks, steal a boat and sail it back to Treasure Island. It would be at least an hour.
Stu didn’t have an hour of life left in him.
“Go before it’s too late,” Stu whispered. “I’ll make a ruckus or something as long as I can.” It didn’t sound like he’d be able to make even a small ruckus and when he spoke next, it was in a fading whisper. “Just get whoever’s left off the island.”
But it was already too late. The Corsairs had not been inactive during all of this. They had not only closed in from all sides, including from above, one of them had crawled up to the smoke bomb, poured a canteen of water onto it and then crawled quickly away as it fizzled out.
Even with his scope, there was no way Mike could get out of the cell alive.
Chapter 28
Jenn Lockhart
In the light of a single flickering candle, Jillybean stood tall and resolute, her arched eyebrow showing her utter contempt. Her lip was stiff and her eyes flashed as hard as diamonds. In every way, Jillybean was still queen. Although she was the one who was locked up with her hands cuffed behind her back, it was as if she had dismissed Stu, like she was dismissing some unwanted flunky.
As he strode from what had once been an armory for the Coast Guard, that had been turned into a makeshift prison, Jillybean had been regal and dreadfully cold—an Ice Queen, Jenn thought.
Then Stu slammed the door shut with such violent anger that it sent cracks running throughout the Queen’s icy exterior. Jenn watched as the arched eyebrow folded and the lip began to quiver, and the hard as diamond eyes became pools of blue tears.
Jillybean went from being the Ice Queen to being only a broken-hearted girl in the space of three seconds and, to Jenn’s surprise, she collapsed in a flood of tears.
“I don’t know what you expect,” Donna Polston said around a bite of apple. Her face queered up and she gave the apple a quick inspection using the light from the one candle. It was softly brown in spots. She tossed it aside and dug for another from her fancy purse. “He’s a proud man. I’ve known him since he was a boy and the only way to change his heart is to make a real and truthful apology, and even then, I don’t know.”
Jenn looked down on the crying queen. “She can’t make a real and truthful apology. She actually believes that what she did was right. It’s almost sad.”
“SAD!” Jillybean screamed, her eyes blazing, Eve’s hate burning through the tears. “The only thing that’s sad in this room is you! You’re a pathetic excuse for a…guhhh.” Jillybean/Eve gasped and choked in mid-sentence as the two fought for control of the body they shared.
“Yeah, sad,” Jenn said, stepping back from the girl with a sigh. It was sad. Jillybean had so much potential, but managed to spoil it, and not just because of Eve. It was Jillybean’s ego that did her in. She actually thought she was a real queen. Jenn, on the other hand, knew that the entire queen business was all a fake or a mirage or whatever the word was for a pretend situation.
Once Jillybean was gone, Jenn would be queen, but not a real queen. She certainly didn’t look the part in her blue jeans, soft down coat and her yellow wool cap. In her mind, she would be an “acting” queen. There was nothing special about her, nothing at all royal, but that wouldn’t stop her from ruling as best as she could.
“You don’t know what sad is, yet,” Jillybean said to Jenn, the tears on her cheeks catching the candlelight just right, making them gleam as though they were mixed with gold. “But you will when Stu gets Mike killed. I know you don’t trust me. I know you think I’ll spend the lives of my people like they were nickels in an arcade, but have you considered what Stu will do?”
“He’ll do his best,” Jenn answered, with a combination of loyal conviction and feeble uncertainty. “And whatever happens, it will be your fault.”
A high, unhinged cackle suddenly erupted from Jillybean. “You trap us here, but it’s still our fault?” She had switched personalities. This was Eve.
Jenn groaned. “Will you please change back? No one wants to talk to you, Eve.”
“Nice,” Eve snapped. “All I’ve ever done was help you, Jenn Crap-heart. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t know the truth about Jillybean. And if it hadn’t been for me you would still be Tony Tibbs little sex toy. And if it wasn’t for me, Stu would’ve died back in Bainbridge. I guess you don’t know it, but I let her save him.”
“Oh, you let her do the right thing? What do you want? A parade?” Disgusted, Jenn looked around the room for a place to sit.
There wasn’t a spot that wasn’t filthy. The walls of the room were bare, while all around the edges, paint chips lay in stratified layers, each representing a passing summer or winter. More paint, this from the ceiling, carpeted the floor with odd and unlikely uniformity. It was as if each chip had dropped down to take a position mirroring that which it had once taken on the ceiling.
With no other choice, Jenn went to the wall opposite Eve and slid down it, sitting with her cuffed hands laying on her thighs. On the other side of the bars, Donna hopped onto the desk next to the candle, which was precariously placed next to a stack of old mail that looked like a small snow bank that was about to avalanche onto the floor.
Eve watched a letter slide from the top of the stack. She nodded once as if it had spoken to her, then knelt awkwardly since her hands were cuffed behind her back.
The three were quiet for not even a minute before Jenn blurted out: “What about all the bad things you let her do?”
“I thought you said that no one wanted to talk to me?” Eve scoffed. “Are you saying you’re a no one?” Jenn glared and Eve laughed with an odd twitch of her shoulders. “You were a no one before you met me, that’s true enough. But, through my good graces…” She paused and twitched her shoulders again, almost like she had an odd itch in an unmentionable place.
“But through my good graces, I have made you into, hmmm, let’s call you assistant queen, which I think is very generous on my part.”
“I am queen,” Jenn replied. “You had your chance and you blew it.”
Eve grinned. “Firstly, I never had my chance and second, you, my sweet little, emptied-headed, Jenn, are not queen. You are a prisoner.”
“Just like you,” Jenn shot back.
“No one is just like me,” Eve replied, standing and stretching, reaching to the ceiling.
Jenn gasped when she saw that Eve’s hands were no longer cuffed. “How did you do that? Do you have a key?”
“Of course,” she answered, wearing a wicked smile. She squatted down over Jenn, holding the tiny key pinched between two fingers. “I bet you would love to get your hands on this. Just call me queen and I’ll let you out.”
Donna had been sitting on the desk with her mouth gaped open. Now, she hopped up in alarm. “Hold on! No one is getting out of anywhere.” She dug furiously through the gilt handbag, tossing aside old apples until she found a black pistol which she pointed at Jillybean.
Eve’s eyes narrowed at the gun. “Is that my Sig Sauer? Are you really pointing my own gun at me?” Donna took a step back, her greying hair falling across her face. She seemed too afraid to take a hand from the gun to clear the hair from her eyes.
“You are such an idiot that you are beyond understanding,” Eve sneered. She straightened and went to the bars, gripping them with white-knuckled anger. “Really, you make no sense. You derided me when I first showed up, then you knelt before me, then derided me again after what I told everyone about Jillybean. Then you cheered me last night and called me queen this morning. And now you threaten me with my own gun.”
Donna’s complexion had turned pasty and she backed around to the other side of the desk. “I’m just being pragmatic,” she explained. “You know, I go with the flow.”
“If you’re not careful, you might learn the hard way not to go against my flow. Now point that somewhere else before you make me really angry.”
Donna shook her head. “You don’t scare me. I just, you know, have my orders. When Stu gets back…”
“He’s not coming back!” Eve barked. “He’s too weak and not just physically. His mind is like jelly.”
“Because of you,” Jenn answered her in a sharp
accusing voice.
Eve glared, her eyes very dark and very dangerous. “You need to shut that ugly trap of yours right this second.”
“Or what?”
Jenn regretted the words immediately as a deadly smirk crossed Eve’s face. There was a killing look in her eyes. It was there for only a second before she unexpectedly clamped down on it, gritting her teeth. “Or nothing. Leave it alone, Jenn. Okay? Just shut up. All of you need to quiet down so I can think!” She thumped her own head with the heel of her hand.
Donna shared an alarmed look with Jenn, which Jillybean caught. “Open the door, Donna,” she pleaded, reaching a hand through the bars. “I-I can’t hold Eve back much longer and she’s getting angry.”
“Tell her I have a gun.”
Jillybean balled both fists as she hissed, “I can see the gun, you stupid bitch. You don’t scare me. It’s the other way around. Any idiot can read it in those dull, unimaginative eyes of yours. Even with the gun, you’re scared of little ol’ me.” She was suddenly smiling an adder’s grin.
“Careful, she’s back to being Eve,” Jenn warned.
Donna rolled her eyes. “No duh. What do I do?”
“Do the smart thing,” Eve said. “Let me out before I take matters into my own hands.” She turned and snatched the yellow cap from Jenn’s head and held it up as if it was some sort of weapon.
“Shoot her if she does anything,” Jenn commanded.
This brought out a wild laugh from Eve. “Really, Jenn? You’d shoot me just because I stole your ugly-ass hat? And you, Donna. You act like I could kill someone with just a hat. Do you think I can? If so, you’d be right. I think I can kill Jenn with it if I wanted to. The question is: do I want to?”
“Give me the hat!” Donna ordered, holding the gun with both hands as she pointed it straight at Eve.
Eve laughed at her, mimicking: “Give me the hat or I’ll fill you full of lead. Ha-ha! You sound like a TV cop from one of those terrible old shows.” The gun dipped, but didn’t swing away. Eve held up both hands, her face assuming a look of terror. “I’m sorry I took the hat. Really. Please don’t shoot me. Please! Here, take it.” Eve reached through the bars and tossed the hat, not at Donna, but at the candle. It went out with a hiss and the room was suddenly plunged into darkness.