GENERATION Z THE COMPLETE BOX SET: NOVELS 1-3

by Peter Meredith

  “Thanks, by the way,” Mike said, breaking in on her thoughts. “Stu and me wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t come for us. I told Jenn that and she agreed, but she was already thinking like a queen. Divisions and factions and all that. She said this was how it has to be.”

  “Jenn’s right,” Jillybean acknowledged.

  “It’s strange. I was so mad at you. Even when you saved us, I was angry because of what you did to Jenn. Now, I’m just tired of it all. Jenn doesn’t want to be queen and Stu doesn’t want to be alone. And I don’t want to be in the middle of any of this.”

  They were now at the main doors of the prison where a small box sat. Jillybean recognized her black coat and three-quarter length boots. They looked like they were about to be thrown away. “I guess Jenn thought she was going to win the case,” Jillybean commented as she slipped the coat over the pink warmup suit and tugged on the boots.

  She looked ridiculous but felt warm. On a cold, wet night like this it was a tradeoff she would gladly accept. “So, what now?” she asked, reluctant to step out into the rain. “You never said what Jenn had decided.”

  Just as she said this, she saw a shadowy figure coming along the wall of the prison from the north entrance. The figure was faceless and formless beneath a billowing rain poncho. Whoever it was struggled to carry a wilting cardboard box.

  “Stu!” Jillybean was out in the rain in seconds and hurrying to cut him off before he got to the docks. In the dark she didn’t see the broken stone underfoot and she tripped, befouling her coat with mud. Up she jumped and half-slid down the terraced hill until she caught the figure just shy of the dock.

  It was not Stu. With stunning disappointment, Jillybean found herself looking at Shaina Hale, who said, “Hi, Your Highness.” She grinned with tears in her eyes and rainwater running in the hollow of her throat.

  Jillybean did her best to hide her disappointment. “Hello Shaina,” she said, offering the best smile she could manage under the circumstances. It was brief with only a suggestion of a curve to her lips. Jillybean couldn’t help that her eyes darted back toward the prison in the hope of seeing a second figure tromping down.

  Other than Mike moving slowly along, the zigzagging sidewalk was empty.

  “I’m supposed to give this to you for your trip,” Shaina said, holding the box a little higher. “It’s food and some warm clothes and another poncho.” She leaned in close and added in a whisper, “There’s a pistol gun and some ammo under there, too. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Do you have one, too?”

  Shaina blinked uncertainly until Mike caught up with them. She glanced at him in undisguised fear and whispered, “Am I supposed to have one?”

  It was impossible for Shaina to be untruthful except in the most obvious and childish ways. She didn’t know what Jillybean was suggesting, which meant she wasn’t coming along. A sharp pain lanced through Jillybean’s stomach.

  “Never mind, Shaina. Uh, Mike, you said that what Jenn had to tell you wasn’t all bad. What did she say?”

  “She said you could take the Captain Jack.”

  At this news, Jillybean blacked out for a few seconds. Her eyes were open, her heart beat and her lungs filled, but she wasn’t there. No one was there. She was only an empty shell.

  When she came back, Mike was walking down to the dock, pointing at the Captain Jack, and saying, “…right there. See the new sail? Okay, maybe it’s not brand new, and sure she’s a little low but it could be worse. I worked on her for a little while this morning, hoping we’d be able to salvage her. Man, I musta plugged a good forty holes and had some of the guys bail out like a ton of water. You know, like three-thousand pounds or whatever, but I guess I missed a few holes.”

  “A few?” Jillybean asked, still somewhat in a daze.

  “Okay, more than a few. Either way, I think she’ll last you a couple of hours in any direction. Though I would not want to try to slip out of the bay. One of them groups doing the fighting have reattached the chain. And I wouldn’t try to head down to the Santas. They hate you worse than…well, let’s just say they’re not a fan of yours. Either way, I think it was mighty nice of Jenn to let you have her.”

  Before Jillybean knew what was happening, she was digging furiously in the box Shaina was holding, searching for the gun. Let’s kill ‘em! Kill ‘em all! The voice was savage, barely recognizable as Eve’s.

  Jillybean pulled her hands back, quickly. “S-Sorry. I thought y-you were going to spill it, Shaina. I…I…” She ended up just shutting her mouth and yanking on the cords running to her lips to form a smile that would do an axe-murderer proud.

  Inside her, Eve was frothing and ranting, vowing a thousand revenges. She’s sending us off in that? It’s a hearse that will take us to our watery grave! Even you have to see what a slap in the face this is, Jillybean.

  “I don’t know if I do,” Jillybean murmured, stepping on the sodden ship, and barely feeling it bob beneath her. She glanced down the steps to the cabin; there was black water up to the third step.

  Mike came to stand next to her. “Yeah, that’s gonna get worse once we untie her so don’t mess around. Get where you’re gonna get to as fast as you can. And, uh, I should warn you we know all your tricks. Don’t even think about coming back and taking one of my boats. We still got that night scope thing.”

  He pointed further along the dock to where someone leaned against the information center; a structure that was one step larger than a kiosk, but not quite a shack in size.

  Did he just threaten us? Eve asked, mortified. Did Mike—What-comes-after-six—Gunter just threaten us?

  Jillybean was shocked as well. So shocked that as she stood there with water pouring off her, she simply slipped from her body when he stuck out his hand.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “Good luck just doesn’t seem to cut it, and goodbye sounds too weird. You know?”

  If she had a knife on her, Eve would have shaken that hand with her right and gutted him with her left. Instead she gripped Mike’s hand with manic fury. “How ‘bout, so long ol’ chum?”

  “Sure, I guess. So long, Jillybean.” He at least looked her in the eye with all his usual honesty. It spoiled Eve’s anger. She couldn’t take the look and retreated to muttering hate-filled insults somewhere deep in Jillybean’s mind.

  Jillybean was glad for the break. She felt gutted by everything that had happened and didn’t think she had the energy to both fight Eve and banish herself. She didn’t even know where she would go. “Bainbridge, I guess,” she said to herself. It made sense since there was still a threat of assassination to her adopted father that had to be dealt with. How long until that was carried out? A week? Probably more like three. If the assassin was smart, that is. These things took time to set in motion and…

  She was jarred from her thoughts by a sudden crushing embrace. It was Shaina. “I love you, Jillybean Queen. Don’t be gone for long.”

  “I won’t,” Jillybean lied. A part of her considered lingering around somewhere in the city, waiting to step in just in case Jenn got in trouble and she might have if she wasn’t needed back home. But simple Shaina didn’t need to know that. “Take care of Jenn while I’m gone, got it?”

  “I will. She needs me since she’s not smart like you. All that stuff she said was really silly, and I didn’t like it at all. But you won. You always win.”

  Jillybean didn’t feel like a winner. “Yeah,” was all she responded with.

  Mike cleared his leaky throat and held out a hand to Shaina who stepped across to the dock. The two undid the ropes holding the Captain Jack to the dock and pushed the ship away. For a few seconds, Jillybean made no move to raise the sail or alter the wheel. She just stood there as the incoming current slowly pulled her east.

  Without doing a thing, the two figures disappeared into the dark, wet night and the island became only a black nothing sitting on the water.

  “Finally,” Eve said, stretching Jillybean’s arms. “That
was nauseating.”

  “What are you do…” Jillybean began.

  Eve stopped her lips without effort. Somehow, She had become tremendously strong. There was something new and vital about Eve that hadn’t been in her for years. Eve’s pulsing personality infused the body they shared, invigorating it, and now Jillybean was thrust aside, forced not into the depths of her internal blackness, but into a corner of her own mind, like a naughty child. She imagined it as a jail and the moment she did, bars appeared in front of her and slick damp walls all around. Around her thighs water sloshed. Strangely, it was less frightening than the darkness.

  “I want you to see what happens when you cross me, Jillybean. And, I might just need a little of your smarts.”

  My smarts are mine, sorry. You’re going to have to remain an idiot.

  “Is that right? Then tell me, how do I know how to figure the angle of the sail relative to the wind and rudder?” As if she had been sailing all her life, Eve adjusted the sail, set it perpendicular to the boat and eased the wheel three points to starboard.

  The Captain Jack, sluggish as a garbage scow, began to brute her way through the water, heading north with the wind on her beam. She’d be able to swing around, slowly of course at anytime and come right back.

  “Not right back,” Eve said, reading Jillybean’s mind. “We’ll come around to the south side of the island under the lee of the laundry facility.”

  We? We aren’t going to do anything. It’s going to be all you who…does what, exactly? Do you think I will let you become queen?

  “I don’t think you’ll have any choice in the matter,” Eve said, pulling on the rain gear from the box Shaina had brought. “Look around you. This time you’re not going anywhere.”

  Jillybean did indeed look around and she found the view very strange. Not the bars or the concrete or the water, all of which was standard imagined subconscious devices used unwittingly to trap her within her own mind. No, it was the view which had her perplexed.

  She could see through Eve’s eyes as if they were her own, or she could see the cell, with its stone walls and barred door, that Eve had constructed.

  “First off, none of this was done unwittingly,” Eve said, with an odd bleary echo repeating: First off, none of this was done unwittingly. “Second, why do you blame Eve for this?” Second, why do you blame Eve for this?

  “Who should I blame?” Jillybean asked, warily. Just like Eve’s, her words echoed back at her.

  “Blame yourself,” Eve said. “If you want out of the cage you built for yourself, get out of it. Like you said, it’s only a mental construct.”

  Jillybean was suddenly very nervous. “How come you’re talking that way, Eve? Mental construct? That doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?”

  Eve did not answer for many minutes. She acted like she hadn’t heard the question. Wearing a pinched expression, she puttered about adjusting the sail and digging through the box Shaina had brought, until she found the gun. Once it was loaded, it went into a coat pocket. Next, she went down into the hold, looking as though she was coming right for Jillybean’s cage.

  “What’s going on?” Jillybean asked again, stepping fearfully back from the bars. “Something’s changed. A little while ago you were screeching about revenge and now…you’re different.”

  “No, we are different.” Eve stared into Jillybean’s eyes. “We’ve changed. Come on, let me show you who I found.” She opened the door without effort, simply pulling on the bars did it. “Yes, that was open the entire time. Come on.” Jillybean was still marveling over the door, when Eve surprised her by taking her hand.

  At first, Jillybean tried to pull away, but she was powerless.

  “No, we are powerful,” Eve told her. “If we want, every door will open before us. Like this one.” Somehow there in the hold of the Captain Jack was a heavy oaken door with a round metal handle. Jillybean pulled on it, both afraid and hopeful.

  At first, she could only see intense darkness, then a white heart floated toward her, becoming, with every inch closer, clearer until she saw that it wasn’t a heart, but a heart-shaped face. Sadie Martin’s face. The moment she recognized it, her older sister rushed forward and gave her a tremendous hug. It was a warm, loving hug.

  “It’s been a while,” Sadie said, tears in her eyes.

  Jillybean was utterly stunned. “Am I dead? Did Jenn kill me for reals?”

  Sadie laughed in the free, happy way she used to. “No. You’re more alive than ever. Come on. We have another surprise.” Sadie pulled her along until they came to an even greater door than before. This one was of iron and was so large the biggest zombie in the world could walk through without brushing the top or sides. Unlike the others, it took the combined strength of Eve, Sadie and Jillybean to open it. As gigantic as the door was, it opened onto a room not much bigger than a standard closet. In it was an old chair and an even older stuffed zebra with a big striped snout and a pudgy belly half-contained by a little blue shirt with the faded words: Too Cute! emblazoned across the front.

  Jillybean’s knees buckled at the sight of her best friend. “Hello Jillybean,” Ipes said. “Did you bring me any cookies? I haven’t had any since…” There was an awkward moment. The last time he’d had cookies was the day he was buried.

  “We can get some cookies for you,” Eve told him, patting that round belly. “Or we can make some. We just have some work to do, first.”

  “Right,” Ipes said. “I forgot. After all, my head is full of fluff.”

  “It’s smart fluff, though,” Sadie remarked. “Wise fluff.”

  Something wasn’t right. No, everything was wrong. As much as Jillybean loved seeing Ipes and Sadie, whole and unhurt, and as much as it pleased her to see Eve acting normal, it didn’t fit. “What happened? Or…or what’s happening? None of this seems right.”

  Eve placed a small, cool hand on Jillybean’s small, cool hand. “We met someone else from our past who put it all into perspective. I think it took this last shock to settle us all into place.”

  “What shock and who are you talking about?”

  The first question surprised Eve. “What shock? The shock of being thrown away once again, of course. Those people said they loved you and what did they do? They put you on trial with a death sentence hanging over your head. They forced you out of their lives. They put you on a sinking ship and sent you out into a bay filled with the undead. They sent you into a world where the only thing around you are enemies.”

  “That’s why we turned to him,” Ipes said, reverentially. He raised a flat hoof, pointing behind her. In dream-like slow motion, she turned and saw the devil leaning casually against the hull. It was Ernest Smith, the bounty hunter.

  She had known all along he would be there. In one blazing fast move, Jillybean pulled the pistol from her pocket and fired.

  Chapter 33

  Jillybean/The other Jillybean

  The bullet should have blasted his head wide open, instead it simply put another hole in the sinking boat.

  “Always so dangerous,” Ernest said. “Always so fast. You could’ve been great.”

  “I am great,” Jillybean corrected.

  He shook his sandy brown head. “Look around you. Do you see greatness anywhere within a mile of here? You have nothing but this boat, a few radishes and forty-five bullets for that gun of yours. What’s worse is that you’re out of time and I’m not talking about how this boat will be on the bottom of the bay in about an hour.”

  “Neil,” she said in a whisper.

  “And Emily. If there’s an assassin on Bainbridge all it would take is a single word, and how long will it be before that word is given? A few days? A week?”

  Without hesitation, she said, “If the winds remain as they are, eight days.” The Black Captain would wait for the last stragglers and he would wait an extra day just in case there were more, and he would wait one more, and all the while his anger and humiliation would grow.

  On the eighth d
ay he would send out his messengers and if he didn’t have spies in the bay area already, he would get them in place very soon.

  “Yes. And what will they discover?” Ernest asked.

  Jillybean knew. “A weak queen and a bunch of confused, infighting Corsairs.” Her hand came up to her mouth and, without knowing it, she started chewing her nail as she pictured the Black Captain’s agents roaming the bay. Some would come boldly under a white flag and others would appear in the dead of night, slipping in among the different factions.

  The spies would sow discord and fear. They would make promises of redemption and a return to greatness. They would threaten, blackmail and bribe until the revolting Corsairs were reeled in one by one. Eventually, the army Jillybean had shattered would be united once more.

  “He’ll undo everything I’ve accomplished,” she said, as sudden fatigue washed over her. She fought against it, drawing strength from her suspicion and hatred of Ernest. “What’s your angle? Why come to me with this? Why aren’t you resting in your grave?”

  “These are incorrect questions. I know you hate me, and I know you think I was this back-stabbing, spying, slaver, but you forget, I was also your teacher. I taught you the value of critical thinking. I taught you the necessity of objectively analyzing factual evidence before forming a judgment. Something you are not doing in this case. Your bias has tainted you and rendered you unable to ask the pertinent question.”

  Jillybean turned piercing eyes on him. “I’m the last person you can razzle-dazzle with five-cent words. You want a pertinent question? Here it is. What can you, of all people, do for me?”

  He smiled that disarming peasant smile of his. The one that had fooled so many people, tricking them into believing that he was nothing but a harmless, nothing of a man. While he was beguiling Jillybean with that smile, someone came up behind her and touched her with an icy hand.