Generation Z [Book ]

by Peter Meredith

  Stu dropped down and snatched the Glock out of Bob’s stiffening fingers. “It was Bob. He’s dead.” That was all the explanation he had time for. Doors were opening up and down the street and people were asking: What was that? Or: Hey, did someone get shot?

  It wasn’t going to be long before someone noticed Bob. Stu grabbed a stunned Mike and started towards Kyle’s backyard, which led to the dead field. It would have been better to head straight back to the canal only that way was filling up with curious people.

  They had just gone around the side of the mobile home when someone walked over to the body and said, “Is that Bob? You do this, Kyle?”

  “It weren’t me. It was strangers what done it.” At this Mike and Stu began to run, not in a wild sprint, but in a ground-eating jog. They moved parallel to the canal, keeping to the backyards, where they ran through a strange desolation of dead shrubbery, crumbling swings sets and above-ground pools which were now little more than giant vats of algae, mold and frequently, human excrement.

  Stu glanced at Mike and saw that if the young man was afraid, he wasn’t wearing it on his face. Stu wasn’t afraid. Things were far from great, but he had been in far worse positions. Here they had the advantage of the dark and the rain, combined with the confusion they had left in their wake. Unless they got terribly unlucky they’d make it to the south side of the island where only a decrepit wall stood between them and safety.

  The thought had just entered his mind when a bell started ringing behind them. Seconds later it was taken up by more bells all around them. Doors banged open, lanterns flared and guns were loaded. The bells were a call to arms.

  “Keep your head,” Stu warned, then turned back to the street that ran along the canal. People were streaming from their houses and heading in all directions. A dozen headed for a small footbridge that crossed the canal. Taking a deep breath, Stu followed them. Each had the same question on their lips: Is this for real?

  For the most part they didn’t think so. They thought it was either a drill or a false alarm.

  One man joked, “Maybe Todd shot himself in his other foot.” He laughed so long at his own joke that he broke into a coughing fit reminiscent of Kyle. His fit stopped him near the end of the bridge where he hung over the rail, spitting into the foul water.

  His friends left him behind. Stu and Mike slowed, hoping the man would finish with his coughing and leave. Mike bent and fiddled with his bootlaces, while Stu squinted back the way they had come. There were more people coming up from behind.

  “Come on,” he whispered. They walked with their heads bowed, their hoods flung over their faces. When they were a few spaces from the coughing man he looked up. The cough caught in his throat as he stared, not at their faces, but at their rifles.

  “Where’d you get those?” he asked in a croaking voice. Stu pushed past and the man went on, “No one’s got…it’s you!”

  Stu looked back and saw the man had a hand on Mike’s coat and was staring into his face. At almost that exact instant, there came a thud of more boots on the bridge.

  With a whisper of fabric, Stu pulled his climber’s axe from his belt loop. He had to kill quickly and silently, and strange as the weapon was, it was perfect for murder.

  Chapter 23

  Jenn Lockhart

  The sound of the M4 going off came as no surprise to Jenn. She hadn’t needed any signs to know trouble was coming. Nothing good or pure would ever live in such desolation. Only the weak of heart or mind would allow this to be their home.

  She had been sitting in the back of the Calypso with her feet braced, two hands on the rope, ready to lift the anchor. Her secret fear was that it would be too heavy to lift. This proved true. She heaved on the rope which bit into her palms, burning them as the Calypso slid toward the arch. Jenn thought she was lifting the anchor, but she was only taking up the slack in the rope.

  When the stern was directly over the anchor and the rope sank straight down into the river, Jenn fought the rope, her rangy muscles straining to heave the anchor up out of the mud. It wouldn’t budge and as the precious seconds ticked away, her anxiety began to redline. She gave up.

  Out swept her machete. With one swing, she split the rope and splintered the wood beneath. Immediately, the Calypso swung out into the stream and before she knew it, she was forty yards from the edge of the island. She wasn’t used to steering with just the tiller though when she got the hang of it, she found it easier than expected and quickly got the boat back near the wall where she felt the keel sliding over submerged logs and dinging off hidden rocks.

  As she moved slightly away, someone on the island rattled off a half a dozen rounds. The reply was a furious barrage.

  “Oh no,” she whispered, desperately afraid for Mike and Stu. She pictured them running for their lives chased by hundreds of crazy-eyed people. Fearing that she was going too slowly, she raised the mainsail only to send the boat into a spin as she misjudged the wind.

  She was close to panicking now. Everything seemed to be going against her, the wind, the rain, the dark, the current and the terrible urgency of the situation that was punctuated by more gunshots.

  She dropped the sail and sent the Calypso so close to the bank that she ran aground on a sandbar. It didn’t matter. The boat was more or less where it needed to be and without an anchor, the sandbar was the best she could do. Now came the wait. She checked her watch and saw that it was ten minutes after nine. At twenty-five after the hour she was supposed to leave, only she knew she never would.

  In fact, she did the opposite. She grabbed her M4 and slid out of the boat and into the icy water; she didn’t even blink at the cold. Her mind was fixated on the wall and the constant thunder of gun fire. It seemed to be heading in her general direction. Still, this end of the island was a quarter mile wide and there was no time for the men to be searching around in the dark for the Calypso.

  “Stuuuuuu!” she screamed as she slogged up to the wall. This section of the wall had been created from broken slabs of old concrete upon which newer concrete had been poured, clearly by someone inept. Sloppy didn’t quite describe the work. Bizarre would be more accurate. It looked as though Salvador Dali had been consulted. Everything dripped and flowed so that the base of the wall was thicker than the top.

  With rebar jutting out here and there and deep cracks in the cement, Jenn found plenty of handholds to the top where she had a good view of the southern part of the island. It had been cut up into fields, all of which were long dead. Within those fields was a running gun battle. It was almost all one-sided.

  She let out another scream: “Miiiiiiiiiike!”

  This shifted the angle of the battle and it started flowing towards her. Two ghostly shadows ran, stopped and shot, then ran again. Chasing them were dozens more shadows. These sprouted little flashes of fire. Even with the danger so great, she was so conscious of wasting bullets that she waited until Mike and Stu were within thirty yards of the wall and their pursuers fifty yards back before she fired three times, taking her time to re-aim between each shot.

  She had no idea if she hit anything, but once the people realized they were targets, they dropped to the ground or hid behind cover.

  They sent a torrent of bullets her way. Some of the bullets missed by twenty yards, sending chips of concrete flying far to her left, others passed so close that they sent chills up her spine.

  Despite the near misses, she fired again and again until the return fire came so close and hot that she was covered in dust and cement chips. It seemed to take forever before Stu hissed, “We’re clear.” Mike was already halfway down the wall while Stu was only just swinging a leg over the wall and starting down. Even though he was only an amorphous shadow, Jenn knew right away that something had gone wrong. He seemed to be climbing using only his hands.

  It was time for her to go and she started down, but with the rain turning everything slick, she lost a handhold and before she knew it she wasn’t falling exactly, but sliding down the sl
oping wall. At the bottom, she went into a tumble that sent her into the river next to the Calypso.

  She came up spluttering with Mike standing over her. As though she were nothing but a half-drowned cat, he picked her up and tossed into the boat. “Get the mainsail up!” he ordered, before running back to help Stu who was limping along in the shallows of the river.

  It took her a second to find the right rope, but before she could haul the sheet up, she heard a scraping sound on the other side of the wall

  Dropping the rope, she pulled the M4 from her back just as someone climbed over the top of the wall. She had no idea whether it was a man or woman, all she saw was a silhouette against the backdrop of the clouds. She shot it down with one pull of the trigger. It landed with an ugly thump.

  “Who’s next?” she yelled. “Show yourself and I’ll put a bullet right between your eyes!” No one tested her, though there was a good deal of name-calling and cursing from the other side of the wall. Gradually, she lowered the rifle and pulled up the sail as Mike helped Stu into the boat. Stu was bleeding from a pair of holes in his thigh.

  “Tend to him,” Mike said. “I got the boat.” He heaved them off the sandbar and climbed onboard. As he worked the boat away from the wall, using the wind to send them to the deepest part of the river where the current was fastest, Jenn crawled to where Stu sat, gripping his leg with both hands.

  “A b-belt or a rope,” he said in a quavering voice. “W-we need to t-tie it off.” She had never heard him sound so weak. There was even a hint of fear in his voice that was matched by the look in his eyes. This was completely unnerving. He had always carried himself with such quiet maturity that Jenn tended to forget he was only twenty-one. Just then he looked like a little boy.

  She yanked her own belt off and was about to wrap it around his leg when she realized he was bleeding too much for a belt alone to be much use. She tore off her jacket and the sweater beneath to get to the blouse she wore under that. Without considering anything but his wound, she exposed herself to the lashing rain. Using her pocket knife, she cut the shirt in half. She then folded both pieces and pressed one to the entrance wound and the other to the exit, before wrapping both with the belt and cinching it tight.

  Only then did she put her soaking wet clothes back on. When she zipped the jacket, she found Mike staring at her. He started in a guilty little spasm. Recovering, he said, “Get him into the cabin. He shouldn’t be out in the cold.”

  Stu tried to help her by pushing with his good leg, only he was too weak, his white face swimming up out of the gloom. Straining with all her might, she managed to get him into the cabin. She shut the door against the rain and wind, but it didn’t seem to help Stu who began to shiver uncontrollably in a way that didn’t seem natural.

  For a moment her wits left her and she was on the verge of panic. She was about to call to Mike to beg his help but was afraid the people of the island would be coming after them with boats of their own. Mike had to get them out of there as fast as possible.

  “I-I can do this by myself,” she whispered. Taking a deep breath, she assessed the situation. “He’s just cold.” The first step to getting him warm was to get him out of the clothes plastered to his shivering body. The very thought sent a new fear through her.

  Because of the ease of marriage, both the Hill People and the Islanders lived a prudish existence—Jenn had never seen a grown man naked. “We have to dry you off,” she told Stu and with shaking hands went to work unbuttoning his jacket and peeling away the layers he wore under it. When he was half-naked, she toweled his head, chest and shoulders.

  When she went for his pants, she hesitated and used his injury as an excuse. “I’m going to cut your pants so I don’t disturb the tourniquet. Is that okay?” His eyes were glazed over; he was beyond caring about modesty. She ended up using a knife to cut him out of his bloody pants, stripping him down to his underwear. “Close enough,” she said, as she layered him in blankets and lit their four candles, hoping to give the cabin a little heat.

  Gradually, he stopped shaking and fell into a light doze. She went out to see Mike, who was tacking back and forth on the wide river, coaxing every bit of speed out of the headwind and the current.

  “What happened?” she asked. He told her the story that ended in a mad chase down the western end of the island. “Is he going to make it?” She had no idea. Her knowledge of first aid was very basic: apply pressure to the wound and clean it with alcohol.

  “So, what do we do?” Jenn asked.

  Mike sighed, saying, “I don’t think we have a choice. The girl doctor was a fake. We can only go home and hope they take us back. And hope Stu makes it. If we get lucky with the winds we can be back in three days.”

  Jenn felt an utter blank at the word “home.” She had no home and she had no hope. Her bad luck had only grown worse, and Stu was the latest victim of it. “We should go north,” she said. “There may be no girl doctor, but there are people. Maybe they’ll take us in. Maybe they’re nice.”

  Mike slammed the rudder over. “If you had seen these people, Jenn you’d know there aren’t any nice people left in the world. You’re the last one. So no, I don’t think we can take a chance going north.” She had never seen him so angry.

  “I should keep an eye on Stu,” she told him. “Let me know if you need anything.” She went into the cabin and found Stu unconscious, blood leaking from the makeshift bandages. They were both sopping and red. Once she had replaced them, she yanked even harder on the belt, waking Stu up briefly.

  “Go back to sleep,” she told him. It was all she could do. They had nothing to clean the wound with and nothing to stitch it together even if she knew how.

  Stu fell back to sleep. Jenn stayed with him until the boat started rocking badly and the wind made a howling sound around the foresail. They had slipped down the Columbia River faster than she had thought possible and now they were toiling through the chop, heading out into the storm-swept Pacific.

  She figured Mike would need her help, but he had already shortened sail, cleared the deck and tied himself down. She did the same as they turned south out of the mouth of the river and began mounting huge white-capped waves.

  Everything was the same as it had been the night before: the cold, the dark, the rain, the howling wind and the crashing waves that threatened to sweep them out to sea every other minute. The only difference between then and now was the feeling of doom hanging over their heads. The one thing that had kept her going the night before had been the certainty that they were heading in the right direction. Now, she was afraid there was no right direction, or if there was, south wasn’t it.

  Every twenty minutes, she would crawl along the streaming deck to the cabin door to check on Stu, and every twenty minutes her heart crumbled just a little bit more. He wouldn’t stop bleeding. Each time she went in, she changed his bandages and tied the belt a little tighter.

  She had just ducked in for a third time when she heard Mike cry: “Jenn! Get out here!” Afraid that a wave had knocked him over, she rushed out and was promptly plowed over by a wave that sent her crashing into the low rail. She grabbed a rope and looped it around her waist with one hand while she held on with the other.

  “Look!” Mike cried as he pushed the boom around. He pointed off the port side in the direction they had been traveling. He was coming around as fast as the Calypso could manage without broaching. Scattered here and there were lights on the water. It was fire.

  “What are they?” she yelled over the wind.

  “It’s the Corsairs!”

  Even though she was cold and wet, she felt the brigades of goosebumps crawl over her flesh. She squinted into the wind and saw the vague outlines of sails and prows. The Corsairs were running north, heading right at them. The fires were burning in hanging pots in an effort to keep the fleet together.

  “Let go the foresail,” Mike ordered when they had turned. He left the tiller and went to work on the main, letting out more of the sail. I
n a storm such as this, letting out more sail was close to suicide. They’d be flying by the seat of their pants on a lee shore without anyway to properly navigate. All it would take to sink them was a rogue wave or a confused gust of wind.

  Still, Jenn didn’t hesitate or question the order. She knew what would happen if the Corsairs caught up to them. They would take Mike as a slave, while Stu would simply be tossed overboard. Jenn could expect to be raped, passed around from man to man until she either went crazy or they made port and she was sold to some slaver.

  She figured if they were caught, she would jump overboard with Stu. It would be a quick end compared to the torture they would inflict on her.

  Chapter 24

  Jenn Lockhart

  Ignoring the danger of the elements, she went to the foresail and worked the knots with numb fingers until the sail billowed out. Seconds later, the mainsail snapped like a whip and filled.

  The Corsairs had much larger boats, and if they had wished, they could have charged down on the Calypso and gobbled it up. Thankfully, it seemed that the Corsairs were more interested in preserving their ships than in pursuing one not very large boat.

  Mike ran north with the wind. Sometimes it was like riding on a rollercoaster and if Jenn hadn’t been so busy trying to stay alive, she likely would have puked her guts out a dozen times. Along with helping Mike keep the boat afloat, she also had to check on Stu who was in a bad way.

  Not only was he suffering from shock due to blood loss, he was also being battered senseless by the fantastic punishment the boat was taking. When Jenn was able to look in on him, she found him crumpled in a corner with blood leaking from both holes in his leg. She changed the bandages again, afraid that the next time she came back Stu would have run out of blood.

  When she came out on deck again, she looked past Mike and saw nothing but black clouds hanging over a black ocean with a fury of wind and rain flying between. The Corsairs were nowhere to be seen. “They might have doused their fires!” Mike yelled over the howling wind. “They’re probably hoping we shorten sail. They’ll be able to catch up if we do.”