Generation Z_The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  This would give her seven hours of sleep if she could drop off that very second. With that nagging worry over what was really going on with Jillybean, Jenn knew there’d be no chance of sleep just then.

  She went out back and saw Stu and Mike arranging the carts on the deck again. There were three of the Corsairs with them—one was missing. She guessed that he was dead and, strangely, found she was saddened by this. “Jeeze, I must be tired,” she said. Normally, she thought of Corsairs as being the only thing on the planet worse than zombies. After all zombies didn’t have a choice of being as horrible as they were. Corsairs chose to be absolutely evil.

  She was sad, but not overcome by grief and was still fixated on Jillybean and the idea of a journey. What she needed was a sign. Taking out her cross, she held it up to the afternoon sun that hung in the southwest and saw with shock that there was a black veil low on the horizon. It was far too dark to be a cloud.

  “The fire,” she said. It was still burning and still spreading, the unusual northwest wind was still blowing the flames in their direction—almost as if trouble was following them. Was this the sign she sought? And if so what did it mean? That wind blew in a sudden gust and seemed to curl right up her coat, reminding her that they were on the verge of full winter.

  “Danger is coming.” It was the simplest interpretation and the most likely one. “But what form would it take?” She couldn’t help herself and she looked back towards the entrance of the warehouse, toward Jillybean. Was she the source of the danger?

  As if the thought had conjured the creature, a crow winged by. A single crow was unlucky. While she was staring at it, a shadow fell over her and a shrill caw had her looking up to where a second and third crow glided by. They were followed by an entire squadron of angry, squawking birds, all heading in the same direction.

  Without thinking she followed them around the warehouse to the next building over. This one, a squat rectangle of corrugated rust and tin, was much smaller and hung with a sign that was so faded that all Jenn could make of it was the letter M and the outlines of what might have been the picture of an oil well. It had an open bay door from which could be heard a cacophony of screeching.

  She stopped in her tracks, her gut telling her not to go. Just turn around and walk away, a voice in her head told her. She didn’t listen. The door and the noise drew her on, partially against her will. At the edge of the bay door, she had to steel herself to look further and when she did she immediately wished she had listened to her gut.

  Inside were the bodies of the people Jillybean had killed. Jenn couldn’t see them but knew they were there, buried under what had to be a thousand crows and ten times that many rats—the noise, the smell, the horrifying sight was too much for her.

  It was as if her mind was extinguished by the sight and just before she passed out she had the fleeting thought: if one crow was bad luck, how unlucky was a thousand? Then the world faded into a grey mist and she collapsed.

  A sharp pain in the side of the head brought her partially around and a dirty pinch on her thigh brought more into the real world. It was not just a dark world but a black one, a strangely frightening black world, one where the darkness glistened like oiled tar and rippled like water. Most horrible of all was that the blackness was alive with black eyes.

  Jenn was stifled by the darkness, weighted down by it and for a moment she was sure she had died and was in some sort of hell. Keyed up she shrieked when she felt another sharp pinch on her legs. There was a great explosion of noise and her face was bracketed and slapped in a soft, confusing manner until she realized that they were wings striking her—crows wings.

  She had been unconscious long enough for the sun to have set and the crows to have grown bold. They did not fly far. They stood or hopped around her gauging her strength of which she had very little. Her muscles shook from sheer terror and she had trouble getting to her feet.

  When she wobbled, a few of the more daring beasts darted in, one trying to take a bite out of her ankle through her jeans. She hissed at it, afraid to provoke them into an attack. They didn’t normally attack people, she was fairly certain of that, then again this wasn’t a normal situation—they had been feeding on human flesh.

  The horrible queerness of the moment did not abate as she backed out of the building with the crows following after. Some flew ahead so that a hundred of them found perches all over the warehouse wall. She had to pass beneath them, each staring down with their glistening eyes.

  Jenn thought she was holding it together right up until one swooped down on her. A flutter of wings was all the warning she had and she flung her arms over her head as she staggered for the door of the warehouse, praying it wasn’t locked. The crows screamed what sounded like obscenities and swooped after her, though when she gained the door, they broke off.

  Slipping inside, she rested against the door, her heart pounding in her worse than if a zombie had chased her. In a way, the crows had been worse than any zombie. They had been supernatural. She had gone looking for an omen and had found the clearest sign of death she had ever seen.

  She was still there trying to calm herself when one of the ex-slaves appeared. It was dark in the warehouse and Jenn did not recognize the woman and the woman did not recognize Jenn, even when she bent and peered down at Jenn with eyes at squints.

  “Have you seen the new girl called Jenn?”

  “That’s me.”

  The woman jumped back, her hands up as if Jenn was about to hit her. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t know. The Queen sent me to find you.”

  “Well, you did, thanks.” Jenn expected the woman, who was at least twenty years older than her and a head taller, to leave or to do or say something, but she only stood there staring with such heavy expectation that it pierced the dark.

  Her name was Shaina Hale and she had something very important to say. Jenn waited patiently for it to come out. When it did, it was disappointingly trite. “The Queen is great,” Shaina said in a rush. “The way she stood up to Tony…it was great. Was she really going to blow herself up if we weren’t freed?”

  It had been Eve who had threatened to blow up the bomb which meant there had been nothing heroic or great about it. It had been totally self-serving, which wasn’t something Jenn cared to admit at the moment. “I’d like to think so, thankfully it didn’t come to that.”

  “Because she’s so great,” Shaina continued, breathlessly. This was fast becoming annoying and Jenn gave the woman a pat on the arm and started away. “And you’re great, too,” she added, stopping Jenn short.

  “I’m not great at all.”

  “They say you saved the Hill People from the Corsairs and they say you killed all sorts of giant zombies with only a crossbow, and they say you can see the future.”

  Jenn didn’t know what to say. No one had ever called her great before and she found it deeply unsettling. “Maybe I did some of that, but it doesn’t make me great.”

  The ex-slave laughed, a gushing sound that had a nervous intensity to it. “Then what does? I haven’t done anything. For twelve years I only did the least I had to so I could live. You guys do all this cool stuff and then you come here to save us too, but none of you wants to be called great.”

  “Jillybean didn’t want to be called great, either?” In a way that was actually a good thing. It meant Eve was still far away. She craved the adulation. Was Jillybean just being humble or was there a deeper issue? Jenn wouldn’t have even questioned this if Jillybean hadn’t also turned so strangely quiet when Rebecca Haigh had called her good.

  “No. She looked right at me and said, don’t call me that. I’m not all that great.” Shaina said this as if stunned she was even noticed by Jillybean, as if Jillybean was some sort of star. “Then she asked me to go find you. She didn’t say it like an order, either. She said please and everything, like I was doing her a favor!” She sighed and then laughed, this time just a little thing that came from the belly.

  “She’s very nice that way,
” Jenn said. “So, do you want to show me where she is?”

  Shaina almost took Jenn’s hand, but then thought better of it and only pointed towards where the only light in the warehouse was emanating. They passed the new clean area where two hundred people were sleeping, almost all of whom were still hooked to IVs.

  They went to where a couple of dozen people were standing around in a tight circle, watching Jillybean slice into a woman’s lower leg. “I found her,” Shaina announced, smiling eagerly.

  In the full light, Shaina was a sad thing. The cholera had turned her from slim to wretchedly scrawny. Her muscles had atrophied so badly that Jenn could wrap her small hand all the way around her nearly nonexistent bicep. She was missing patches of hair and a number of teeth, and had many jagged, white scars on what had once been an intelligent, sternly beautiful face. When she turned to present Jenn to Jillybean, the light played on her silhouette showing Jenn that her skull was not nearly as completely round as it should have been. Someone had hit her hard enough to dent her head.

  “You did great, Shaina,” Jillybean said, her voice much tighter than usual. “Thank you so much. Sorry for having to wake you early, Jenn, but there are a….”

  Shaina interrupted, “I didn’t have to wake her. She just knew you would need her.” She said this, looking at Jenn with reverent awe.

  Jenn didn’t have the heart to discourage her. Shaina seemed to need Jenn to be a full blown telepath and for Jillybean to be a rockstar. And she wasn’t the only one looking at the two of them with charmed eyes. Many of the others were gazing at them as if they had some sort of otherworldly magnificence about them.

  In Jillybean’s case this was true. She was, if not magnificent, different enough from everyone Jenn had ever met, to make her special, perhaps she could even be called great. There was no denying that she had changed lives with her brilliance.

  Jenn thought of herself as “just Jenn” and didn’t like how they were looking at her. She wasn’t the most perceptive person, but she could sense their awe was distinctly fragile and she was afraid that if she wasn’t able to live up to their vision of magnificence they would turn on her and try to bring her down.

  Also she had to wonder what they would think of Eve. They had caught a glimpse of her the night before—and had cheered when she had turned her particular brand of evil on the Corsairs. How would they react when it was one of them facing execution for looking at her wrong? What would they do if she impulsively set fire to their storeroom?

  Judging by the nervous look Jillybean was giving her, Jenn thought they were about to find out.

  “You needed me for something?”

  “Yes, I had to start without you. Sorry, but she was crashing.”

  Jenn was startled to see Jillybean was cutting into Miss Rebecca. She was semi-conscious, her blue-brown eyes fluttering. Mike knelt over her, ready to hold her down just in case the pain of having her leg opened up woke her.

  “Hey,” he said, giving her a wan smile and trying not to look anywhere near the lady’s leg.

  “Hey,” she answered, glad that he was there. She hadn’t come close to getting over her fright and she felt she needed him as much as Jillybean needed her. Reluctantly, she turned away from him. “What do you want me to do?”

  Jillybean’s eyes twitched and instead of answering, she clamped her lips tight, as if she had a goldfish in her mouth and was trying to keep it from jumping out. Jenn understood; Eve had wanted to make some biting comment that would have been embarrassing to both of them.

  “She’s going to be okay,” Jenn assured Jillybean. “You’re doing the right thing.” She had no idea if Jillybean was in fact doing the right thing. In truth, cutting open Miss Rebecca’s leg seemed to be the exact wrong thing. Her leg was fine as far as Jenn could see. It was her arms that were the problem. They were covered in dark splotchy bruises. It looked as if someone had beaten her.

  Jenn knelt down opposite from Jillybean and leaned over the incision. It was small, maybe three inches long and so far it wasn’t deep. If this was a mistake there was still time to fix it. She was still staring when a shadow fell across her. The spectators had moved in closer. “Maybe we should clear the area,” Jenn said. “Mike can you move them back?”

  He was glad to get away and very quickly drove the people back a good twenty feet.

  “So,” Jenn said, trying to sound calm. “What’s going on with her? Something wrong with her leg?”

  Jillybean blinked at the question and shook her head as if to clear it. “Of course not. Oh, I guess it does look confusing. We’re doing a procedure called a venous cutdown. She’s so dehydrated that her smaller veins can’t hold a catheter. In her case they’re thin as tissue paper. So…” She took two retractors and pulled back the flesh she had slit.

  “We cut through a bit of tissue and expose the Great Saphenous Vein, which just happens to be my favorite vein.” She sounded much more sure of herself now and although her face was half-hidden by her mass of hair, Jenn could tell the twitch was gone from her eyes. “You have to be very careful. You don’t want to nick it or the anterior tibial artery which is this vessel here, the one that’s pulsing.”

  Jenn saw it nestled in a little pond of blood, surrounded by this and that bit of unknown and very disgusting anatomy. She felt her stomach roll. It was a quick roll, however. She was getting used to this sort of thing.

  “Is that pulse supposed to be that fast?” The artery looked like it was attached to some sort of electrical wire.

  “Most definitely not. It’s another sign of severe dehydration. The body makes up for the lack of volume by speeding blood around. Now we tie off the vein distally, meaning away from the heart relative to the position of our incision. When that’s done we make the smallest opening in the vein, insert the catheter like so and then add one tiny suture to hold it in place.”

  She used a little fishhook-like needle to put the suture in, making big, obvious motions which were quite unlike her. “Now we untie the vein. If she bleeds then we might need to put in another suture. If not we hook up the IV and run her wide open. Now we close the main incision with some sutures, cover it with a sterile dressing and tape everything down good and tight.”

  Jillybean did all of this, again with large movements. When she was done she looked up with a smile. “I want you to do the next one.”

  “Me? The next one? What next one?”

  She pointed at a child of maybe eight who was lolling in a daze not ten feet away. “I couldn’t, uh let anymore die,” she said in a whisper, her eyes averted.

  “But why me?” She wanted to say: Haven’t I done enough? but the child might have heard and besides it seemed selfish.

  “It makes sense that someone else knows a thing or two.” Her smile dimmed and her eyes couldn’t seem to rise to Jenn’s.

  Jenn was casting about for an excuse when a hand reached out and grabbed her wrist. It was Miss Rebecca. It had only been a few minutes and was already feeling the effect of the fluids. “Take me with you. Please. I can’t be left behind.”

  Jillybean had no trouble looking her in the eyes. “I won’t leave you behind, don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re safe no matter what.”

  It didn’t take a genius to read those lines. “What about the rest of us?” Jenn asked. “Will we be safe? And where will we be safe?” She knew they would be safe in any direction except for southwest—that was the direction of the dark veil she had seen just before the crows had come.

  “The barge will be perfect in your old stomping grounds,” Jillybean said, finally able to look her in the eye. “The San Francisco Bay area.”

  For the second time that day, Jenn felt the world spin and go grey as she pictured the horde of rats and crows feeding on the dead. San Francisco was almost perfectly southwest of them.

  Chapter 29

  Jillybean caught Jenn as she fell, laid her down and studied her with her penetrating blue eyes. She was bent over Jenn and in her haze, she thought Ji
llybean was going to kiss her—and she did in a way. Jillybean touched her lips to Jenn’s forehead and muttered, “No fever.”

  She then took up Jenn’s wrist, checked her pulse and declared it, “Normal. Could you describe your bowel movements for me?”

  Mike Gunter took that exact moment to hurry over, having seen Jenn suddenly slump over. Jenn went red in the face. “No, I will not. They’re fine and I’m fine. It’s just I saw something earlier. A sign and…”

  She stopped as the room seemed to just freeze. Whispered conversations ended abruptly and the only movement was the swinging of every head in her direction as all eyes were focused squarely on her. Jillybean, Mike, Diamond, Johanna, the poor, thin ex-slave Shaina Hale, and everyone else. They were all staring so unabashedly that it went beyond the border of civility and deep into being rude. Worse still, there was also what could only be called a religious fervor in many of their eyes and she knew that whatever she said would be taken as gospel.

  Jenn faltered under the pressure, unable to finish her sentence. What if she were wrong? What if the smoke was just smoke and the crows were just crows? What if they followed her blindly and she led them straight to their deaths? What if they found out the truth? What if they found out that she was just a girl? What if they found out how unlucky she was?

  Jillybean saw the sudden indecision and the fright in her eyes. “We’re not going to discuss this here,” she said, softly. “We’ll talk once we have finished our work.”

  “Yes, that’d be good,” Jenn agreed, looking down and away, anywhere but at the many hungry eyes. She was so eager not to be the center of attention that she pointed at the boy in the delirium. “You said he’s next?”

  For a second, Jillybean hesitated, wishing she could sit Jenn down and stamp out the ridiculous supernatural notions pervading her mind. But there was still the greater good to think about, though just then the idea of using the people’s sad gullibility against them felt like the greater evil.