GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  Jenn had such an exaggerated view of Jillybean’s intellect that she was certain that by the time Donna relit the candle, Eve would have disappeared into thin air. “Don’t worry about the candle, Donna. Guard the door. She’s going to…”

  With a crushing blow, Eve slammed into Jenn without warning and before she knew it, Eve had wrapped herself around Jenn’s body, holding her from behind with her legs locked around her waist and an arm wrenched up around her throat. The arm was tight and close to suffocating Jenn.

  It took a good minute before Donna got the candle lit and when she did, she spun around with the gun jutting out in front of her. She was openly surprised at what she saw. “Let her go,” she said to Eve. “Come on. I can kill you before you can do anything. You know it and I know it.”

  “Really?” Eve held up a tiny vial with her free hand. It couldn’t have been more than an inch and a half long, and filled with a thin, green fluid. “Since you know so much, maybe you can tell me what this is.” Donna squinted and then shook her head.

  Jenn had a terrible feeling about the vial and definitely didn’t like it hovering over her face. “Is it acid? Or poison?”

  “You only get one guess,” Eve said, giving Jenn’s throat a healthy squeeze until her eyes began to pop and her face went a bright red. After a few seconds, Eve released her. “It’s poison. It’s the deadliest poison ever made. Only one drop is needed to kill a full-grown man. Pretty cool, huh? Jillybean keeps it hidden, you know, just in case her brains fail her. There are a lot of people who want her dead. Are you one of them, Jenn?”

  Even if Jenn had wanted to, she couldn’t have answered. Eve was strangling her again.

  “What about you, Donna? Do you want to kill Jillybean?” Donna shook her head. “Then drop the gun.”

  “Don’t,” Jenn spat out and nearly had her larynx crushed for it. She could only take tiny sips of air from high up in her throat. Eve easily kept the choke-hold in place. With the body-lock and her hands cuffed, there was no fighting the bigger girl. She could only hope that Donna would keep her head and do something to help.

  Donna tried. She jabbed the gun toward Eve threateningly. “Let her go, or else.”

  “More empty threats? What happened to your pragmatism? If you shoot, Jenn and I both die and then who will lead? And who will take care of all the wounded? And who will keep you alive, Donna? That’s the biggest question you have to answer. Who’s your best chance at survival? Who has the brains? Who has the experience? Who has the love of the people? And who is just a kid?”

  The gun suddenly dropped and hung at her side. “They said you’d kill us all,” Donna explained. “They said you didn’t care about anything.”

  “You’ve known them longer than me. Have they ever been right? Didn’t Jenn screw up their first trip to Sacramento? Didn’t she get people killed just taking a boat ride from Pelican Harbor to Alcatraz? That’s what I heard. And hasn’t Jenn always been bad luck? Bad luck follows her like crows.”

  Donna began nodding, her eyes varying between empty and frightened.

  “Put the gun down,” Eve commanded in a soft voice. “Now, unlock the door.” Donna couldn’t look Jenn in the eye as she followed the orders. “Now, go put your nose in the corner. Yes, the corner. Don’t worry, you’re not being punished. It’s to make sure there’s no funny business when I release Jenn.”

  Like a child, Donna put her face in the far corner. Only then did Eve let go of her choke hold. Jenn rolled to the side, gasping. When she looked up, Eve held the Sig Sauer, cradling it in joy like she would a baby.

  “N-Now what?” Jenn demanded, her voice cracking. She tried to swallow; the pain made her grimace.

  Eve glanced at her, then sniffed the barrel of the gun wearing a soft, sensuous, victorious look. “I’m not sure. I’m playing catch-up here. Stu or Mike, or one of those guys took off to do something stupidly heroic, is that right?”

  Jenn glared ice-daggers and refused to answer a question that involved calling either Stu or Mike stupid. After a sheepish glance at Jenn, Donna explained what was going on.

  “I guess I don’t get it,” Eve said. “Why would Jillybean care about Alcatraz?”

  “Who’s the stupid one, now?” Jenn asked, allowing herself a moment of out-of-character snideness. “Even as weak as we are, we can defend Alcatraz and the Floating Fortress at the same time. If we can get the Corsairs to think we can also defend Treasure Island, then we’ve won.”

  “It doesn’t mean you’ve won,” Eve replied with her own brand of practiced snideness. “It means Jillybean has figured out a way to prolong the fight, to kill even more of you.” This hit Jenn like a kick in the stomach and brought back the victorious look to Eve’s face.

  Strangely, Jenn found herself defending Jillybean. “I don’t think so. Not after the beating the Corsairs have taken. And when we raise our flag over Alcatraz in the morning, it’ll be just one more loss, one more wound, one more knife in the back.” It was a strange thing to say and Eve arched one of Jillybean’s golden eyebrows at it.

  “But if you can’t take the island, the very opposite will occur,” Eve said, speaking partially to herself. “You’ll lose the last of your fighters and use up most of your ammo. It’s all or nothing with one of those idiots in charge. Well, that decides things. What sort of boats do we have left?”

  “Boats?” Jenn asked, warily. “Why do you want to know?”

  Eve smirked. “To get out of here. I’ve seen the dregs you have left.” She gestured at forty-four year old Donna Polston, with her haggard, tired face and her bandaged arm. “If we can defend the island, then they can, too. Sorry but Stu and Mike don’t stand a chance. But we do if we get moving quick.”

  Donna slipped a glance toward Jenn, who caught her eye. “We aren’t leaving, but if you want to, go right ahead, you’ll save me the trouble of banishing you.”

  “Ooooh, banishment. Scary. Just tell me about the boats.”

  “There’s only one and you’ve been on it already. The Captain Jack.” Eve only shrugged at the name, clearly not remembering the bullet-ridden, half-sunk boat which had washed ashore a few hours before. “Take it and go.”

  Now it was Eve’s turn to become wary. “Why, what’s wrong with it?”

  “What do you care?” Jenn asked. “You want to leave and it’s the only boat, which is good since we’re out of sailors, anyway.”

  “But I don’t know the first thing about sailing.”

  Jenn wished her hands were free so she could lean back and put them behind her head in a show of nonchalant smugness. “Maybe you can ask Jillybean. She knows.”

  A look of disgust crossed Eve’s face. “I’m sure I can figure it out. If that idiot, Mark can do it, so can I.”

  “His name is Mike,” Jenn shouted as Eve left, pulling Donna along by her good arm. “Damn. Now what do I do?” She went to the locked door and gave it a tug. It held firm without even a rattle. The thought crossed her mind just as a far away machine gun rattled off a string of bullets. “Oh God,” she whispered and made a stunted sign of the cross.

  More far away guns fired and each was a blow to Jenn, who imagined the worst. She could picture the three boats being torn to pieces and the only thing she could think was that it had been a mistake not to turn Eve back into Jillybean. The Captain Jack was a floating heap of junk, but with it she could get to Mike and save him. Even without a sign she knew, deep in her heart, that the attack was doomed.

  Unable to come up with a better idea, she screamed, “Hey! Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”

  “I can.” A figure in black had suddenly appeared in the doorway. It was Jillybean, wearing an impish smile.

  Jenn hadn’t expected an answer, especially from her. “What? Are you back to gloat? And who is that? Is that still you, Eve?”

  “No. Eve took one look at the Captain Jack and had a panic attack, just as I expected. I knew she would never be able to leave the island without me.”

  “Wait, w
hat?” Jenn asked, turning frosty. “Just as you expected? You planned all of this out, didn’t you? You meant for her to escape so you could escape!”

  A shrug was followed by an explanation that was shockingly blasé. “Given the particulars of the situation, I knew that Eve could execute an escape, while I could not, at least while under guard. She has a way of skirting certain moral boundaries that eludes me, possibly because I actually possess morals, despite the evidence to the contrary.”

  She spoke as if she were intent on using up the entire dictionary in a single, terribly long sentence. The barrage of syllables lulled Jenn into a momentary stupor. She recovered quickly. “Eve could have killed me! She had poison, damn it! And she almost…no. You almost strangled me to death.”

  A sigh slid from Jillybean’s lips as she unlocked the cage. “No, she would not have killed you. I think she likes you, well, as much as she can like anyone. Come on. We need to go rescue Mike and Stu. Unless you’d rather argue. I was hoping that you’d thank me.”

  Jillybean went to undo the cuffs, but paused just before she did. “You’re going to want to hit me. I suggest that you don’t. Eve is close and…”

  Jenn interrupted her with a punch square on the cheek.

  Chapter 29

  Jillybean

  She felt like a funhouse mirror with a hundred silvered cracks racing through it, each deep and long. A mirror wasn’t something one could mend. The only choice open to her was to fix her gaze at the clearest of the pieces and hope that it didn’t crack further.

  The punch to the jaw chipped away at the edge of that piece and for a moment, she didn’t see herself staring back. It was Eve. You played me, bitch! Jillybean’s left hand doubled into a sinister fist, which she fought back down.

  “Don’t take it personally. I play a lot of people.” Jillybean didn’t realize she had said this out loud. It’s how her mind had been for the last few days. Her minutes of lucidity were punctuated by stuttering moments of darkness, so that from one second to the next she didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.

  Eve wasn’t real, however the girl standing over Jillybean in a towering fit of anger was. “How can I not take poison personally?” Jenn demanded. “That vial was inches from my face. She could’ve spilled it by accident. Or like maybe by ‘accident,’ you know, sort of like what happened to One Shot?”

  Jillybean blinked up, seeing Jenn fully for the first time since she’d been punched. It felt like some time had passed. Not seconds, or minutes, or even hours, just simply “some time.” It was impossible to measure. There were moments when she would blink and days would have passed, and other times where it seemed as though she were treading endlessly on a sea of darkness only to find out that only fifteen minutes had come and gone.

  She reacted the same way after every one of these blackouts. She stalled, searching for clues. In this case, the pain in her cheek was very present: the punch had to have landed recently—unless there had been more than one, set days apart.

  This was unlikely. They were still in the armory and Jenn still had the handcuffs dangling from one wrist.

  “One Shot?” Jillybean asked as she worked her jaw around. The temporomandibular joint, or the “hinge” of her jaw as most people thought of it, had taken its share of the punch and now made a clicking noise when she opened her mouth too wide. “I didn’t kill him. I saved him. You were there, remember?”

  “Yeah, I was there, but what did I see? Sure, you made it look like you rescued him so you could look like the hero, but maybe you put in a ‘weak’ stitch somewhere? You know, one that might just pop if he coughed, or one that would, like dissolve after a few hours. He would bleed into his belly and no one would know.”

  Jillybean didn’t even entertain the idea. “That’s crazy,” she said, reclining against the bars in an attitude of resigned exhaustion. “You and Colleen have been cooking up crazy schemes again.”

  “You’re calling me crazy! You know you’re the crazy one. It’s why I can’t trust you. We’re supposed to be friends, but you let Eve practically kill me so you could escape…”

  “So we could escape to help Mike and Stu.” Jillybean pointed toward the door, where the echoes of gunfire filtered in. “Don’t you want to help them?”

  Jenn glowered. “You know I do, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you and me. I’m talking about…” A particularly long back and forth rattle of gunfire caused her to pause, sucking in her breath. When it ended, she dropped her eyes. “I’m talking about why we put you in here in the first place and why you can’t be queen.”

  Jillybean stood furious at first. She was so angry that Eve started slipping into her subconscious, spitting out dark words, or rather just parts of them. It sounded as though her voice was coming from a distortion-filled radio. It was a few moments before Jillybean realized she could only hear Eve during the uneven pop-pop-pop—pop-pop sound of gunfire. It was like Eve was speaking in Morse code.

  “I do what I have to,” Jillybean said, unapologetically. “A true queen has to do things that are sometimes beyond the pale for the good of her people.”

  “Maybe a ‘true’ queen might do that, but a good queen wouldn’t. And you are not a good queen. I don’t know if you are even a good person. It’s why this can’t work. It’s why I’m going to be queen.”

  Eve’s syllables were beginning to form unwanted words: she was saying something about Ernest. Jillybean growled, “I told you not to listen to him!” She shoved both hands into her wild hair and marched away to the other side of the armory, then marched right back. “You would make the ideal queen, Jenn Lockhart, but only under ideal conditions, and those conditions have not yet been met. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. It’s also the truth that you don’t have the consent of the governed, meaning, as long as I’m around you will never be queen.”

  Jenn stood to her tallest and opened her mouth. Jillybean snapped her fingers in front of the girl’s face before she could speak. “Don’t say anything you’re going to regret. You’ve insulted me, you’ve locked me up and you’ve punched me. I forgive you for all of that because I…I love you, Jenn. I think you are wonderfully, ludicrously naive, innocent and sweet. And yet…”

  She paused as a sad smile crept across her face. She reached out and touched Jenn’s rich, auburn hair, feeling a long moment of jealousy—not because of Jenn’s hair, though she did have the nicest hair of anyone Jillybean had ever met—no, she was jealous of Jenn’s blissful ignorance. Many times, it was a wearisome burden to be gifted as Jillybean was.

  This was one of those times.

  “And yet,” Jillybean continued after a sigh, “I can’t have you undermining me. If, as queen, I need to take unpleasant steps to ensure the safety of the whole, then I will, and I won’t apologize for it, either. Eve and the vial, that had to happen to save Stu.”

  “And Mike.”

  “Yes, and Mike. The point is that maybe you can’t trust me on the little things, but you can trust me on the big things. I promise that. Now, promise me, as your queen that you won’t try to undermine me.”

  Jenn didn’t hesitate or shrink as she said, “No.”

  Jillybean couldn’t help feeling an even greater admiration for the girl’s toughness. She didn’t say so, of course. Instead, she turned on her heel and strode out of the armory and into the cold night. Behind her, Jenn came stomping angrily along. “As your queen, I order you to make that promise. You did give me your oath, after all.”

  “No. You tricked me into that oath. You, uh, made it seem like you were something you weren’t.”

  “Hmm, I suppose misrepresentation is cause enough to forgo an oath. I release you from it.” Jillybean stopped and turned suddenly, coming face to face with Jenn. “Now, make a new oath.”

  Jenn stepped back. “No! You aren’t fit to be queen.”

  Just as suddenly as she stopped, Jillybean turned and walked with even greater urgency to the dock where the Captain Jac
k sat dark and low in the water, looking like a floating pile of scrap. Shredded sails were cast on deck like a funeral shroud and the boom hung over the sides of her torn-up hull and dipped into the water. Only the fact that it was tied to the dock kept it from sinking.

  She’s only fit for the dead, Eve whispered. Put Jenn on her and…An image of a burning boat—a floating pyre—came to Jillybean.

  “No.”

  “This is what we’re going to use?” Jenn asked, staring goggle-eyed at the boat. “Will it even make it? And who is going to sail it? You?”

  Jillybean shrugged. “I could if I wished, but Donna is getting me a crew.”

  A noise of disbelief: “Wha-uh?” escaped Jenn. “A crew? Who?” The crew trickled in over the next few minutes. It was a pathetic crew; and most likely a doomed crew.

  Pale and wheezing, William Trafny, who looked on the verge of pneumonia, was the captain of the boat. One-armed Aaron Altman worked the wheel, while dented-headed Shaina Hale helped string up the “new” sail, which was little more than the old, raggedy sails stapled together to form one ghastly thing that looked as though it might have been stretched zombie flesh. It only held together because the wind was so weak.

  Donna, her injured arm pinned under her coat, led the bucket brigade, whose job was to keep them from sinking. Her team consisted of Tammy Easterling, her scars standing out like white lines on her face, Melody Rinkman, little Lindy Smith, her scrawny arms shaking under the weight of each bucket, Jodie Batch, the Sacramento girl with the bowed legs that Jillybean had saved, and Jenn Lockhart. They bailed as fast as their tired limbs could bail.

  They could have used more people on the bucket brigade, however the other volunteers took one look at the Captain Jack and had promptly un-volunteered, disappearing into the night as quietly as they had come.