Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned

by Meredith, Peter

  “Or from hell,” he whispered to himself. He could easily imagine that he had died, that the undead had killed him and dragged his soul back down to hell. The pulsing light lent a surreal quality to the world. It blotted out the stars so that it seemed as though he were surrounded by endless darkness above and a vast lifeless prairie below.

  The thought was absurdly unsettling and, with his face twisted into a grimace of pain and fright, he concentrated on getting to the box. It reminded him of a small camper, but only in size and shape. It had no windows and only one door set in the exact middle of the side facing him. It was black and seemed to be made of crudely welded metal plates. Under the light, it too had an unsettling quality, as if the rockets were being worked inside it by dozens of imps with reptilian skin and mouthfuls of wickedly sharp teeth.

  In his mind, they were being whipped into working by a larger demon with hoofed feet and red eyes…

  Troy shook his head to clear it. He had been on the verge of freaking himself out. I’m not in hell, he told himself, And there are no demons in there. It’s only…

  Just as he was thinking this, the door opened and out spilled red light. It was a strange, dim sort of light that did little to push back the darkness. Standing in the center of the doorway, framed by the light, was a black figure that seemed so much more demon than human that Troy stepped back, fiercely gripping his bayonet.

  “Do not be afraid,” the person said in a low voice. It was a woman. Was it the Queen? Was it one of her helpers? The very fact that it was a woman had him hesitating. Had it been a man, Troy probably would have hurled the bayonet at him and rushed off into the dark.

  “Hurry, the flare is not going to last,” she whispered. “I won’t hurt you.” It was then that he noticed she held a gun. She made a show of holstering it. When it was out of sight, she added, “Drop your knife and come in.” Amazingly, she stepped out and held the door open for him.

  It was such an odd thing to do that he found himself hesitating until it was too late. The flare was barely thirty feet off the ground when she sighed and stepped back inside. It was the sigh that got Troy limping to the door. The sigh had been tinged with sadness.

  She stopped him at the door. “The knife?” She held out her hand. If this was the Queen, he could stab her in a blink of an eye and perhaps end the war. She had to know this and yet she was perfectly calm, her hand completely still. She wasn’t afraid and she had no reason to be. It would have gone against everything he believed in to kill her just then. He was no assassin to stab the unwary.

  He gave her the knife and she allowed him inside, shutting the door behind him. “I will ask that you do not shout, make noise, or otherwise interfere.” She gestured to a couch that was built into one of the walls. “Take off your boot so we can see that leg. Donna, if you would be so kind?”

  Another woman, this one a good deal older, helped Troy to the couch. There were six people in the room, which was smaller on the inside than he had expected. The other four were men, three of which were undoubtedly Corsairs. They were scrubby, bearded and covered in tattoos. They eyed Troy with matching sneers.

  “He looks like he got all dressed up to go trick-or-treating,” one said. The other two sniggered, while the fourth man smiled, nervously.

  “Am I a prisoner?” Troy asked as Donna started untying his boot. The older woman looked up but didn’t say anything.

  The others glanced to the Queen, who had her face propped in front of an odd view-finder that hung from the ceiling on a short tube, similar to what would be found on a submarine. She worked it around in a circle, whispering to herself. “That’s a lot of them. Maybe too many. How do I know how many is too many? I just think it looks like too many.”

  One of the Corsairs cleared his throat. “Your Highness?” His sneers had evaporated. He was suddenly nervous. “The puppy you rescued had a question.”

  “Hmm? What’s this about a puppy?” Her eyes went wide at the sight of Troy. It was as if she had never seen him before.

  She was playing some sort of game and he didn’t appreciate it. “Am I a prisoner?” he repeated, coldly. “If so, there should be…” His words dried up as she leaned in close, peering into his ash-covered face. Her eyes were uncommonly large and brightly blue. She smelled of shampoo and lilac perfume. The scent wasn’t strong and yet her over-all effect, her beauty, her aroma, her wild, uncouth hair was so beguiling that Troy leaned back, awash in uncertainty. No woman among the Guardians had ever looked like this or smelled like this or acted like this.

  Troy was struck by the most ungentlemanly desire. He couldn’t look her in the eye.

  “The Queen doesn’t take prisoners,” she said and then laughed quietly. “Not for long, at least.”

  “Then you plan on killing me?”

  “For what? Did you do something wrong?” Her eyes shot even wider as if an obscene thought had struck her. She turned away, hissing, “You need to stop that, Eve.” When she turned back, she wore an odd, fixed smile. She excused herself and went to the only other door in the room. When she opened it, a bitter chemical odor wafted out.

  She left and there was a strained silence that was surprising. Troy expected the Corsairs to make some lewd or piggish comment concerning the Queen’s behavior. The Corsairs were infamous for their crudeness, after all. They said nothing. One went to the periscope to look out, while the other two just lounged back on chairs.

  The only person who said anything was the fourth man in the room. He didn’t seem to like being near the other men. “Y’all ran into a hell of a fight back there. Say, y’all get scratched or bit or something?”

  Troy ignored the use of the word “hell” and answered, “I don’t believe so. One of them grabbed my ankle and squeezed it cruelly when I killed it.”

  “It’s not scratched,” Donna said, flicking a lighter and inspecting his ankle with raw flame. “It is bruised pretty good. A bone bruise can smart for a little while. I can wrap it for you if you want.”

  “Really? You would wrap it?” The very idea was completely at odds with what he knew about Corsairs. It was common knowledge that they were violent, thuggish and evil. They were proud to admit their tortures, all of which were sadistic in the extreme. He half expected them to set his hair on fire and kick him out of the trailer; placing bets to see how long he could run before the undead ate him.

  “I take it she’s not going to kill me…”

  A sudden whoosh from the other room made him jump. One of the Corsairs laughed at him, while the man at the periscope muttered, “It’s going deep, deep, deep and off to the left.” He pulled his eye from the viewfinder and gazed baldly at Troy. “She must like you.” The third Corsair opened his mouth to say something only at that moment, the Queen came back in and he locked away his comment behind tight lips.

  She paused in the doorway, taking stock of the room. “Good, it’s only been a minute.”

  “It was a short one, your Highness,” Donna assured her. “We barely even noticed. But next time, maybe don’t go out there like that. There’s no sense putting yourself in danger.”

  The Queen did not reply to her. She walked over and gave Troy a once over. “That was some stiff odds you were up against. I’m surprised that you made it. Surprised as well as happy. We’ll need men like you.”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I will never become a Corsair. If that means tossing me out, so be it. I would just like my knife back before you do, if you don’t mind.”

  “It’s good that you hate them,” she answered. “I hate Corsairs too, and my goal is to rid the earth of them. What’s your name, trooper?”

  “Knights Sergeant Troy Holt, ma’am. And if you hate Corsairs, why are you in league with them?” Troy cast a look at the Corsair at the periscope.

  The Corsair was Mark Leney who smiled, showing crooked teeth. “We’re reformed Corsairs,” he said around the false smile. “We’ve seen the error of our ways. You’re a Christian, right? You must believe in forgiv
eness. If so, then you can start by forgiving us, though I don’t remember ever doing anything to wrong you, Knights Sergeant Troy Holt.”

  “You helped tear down our wall and now you’re sending a horde of zombies to kill my people.”

  “Well, there is that,” Leney agreed. “You got me on that one. Though in my defense this whole mess really is political. I’m just following orders, probably just like you.”

  The Queen shot him a look and Leney’s mouth clamped shut. “This is actually beyond political,” she explained. “We’re in the realm of geo-political. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance.” She held up thumb and finger so that barely any of the red light slipped between them. “We are this close to extinction as a species. Not only must we stop the depredations of the Corsairs, we have to unite the various groups under one banner and pray that humanity can recover.”

  “And you think you can do that by sending a zombie horde after us? It sounds to me like you’re trying to speed our extinction along.”

  “That’s because you lack foresight. Donna, if you’ll wrap him up and Captain Leney, if you’ll be kind enough to give him a weapon and escort him back to his town.” Leney’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell open, but only for a second. After that his eyes went to squints, the red light adding a touch of the demonic to them.

  Troy was sure the man was plotting to kill him, and was probably even then thinking up the lies he’d tell when he got back alone.

  Jillybean must have sensed the same thing and said, “You will have nothing to fear, Knights Sergeant Troy Holt. I will find you whole in the morning, right Captain Leney?” Her eyes pierced him and his scheming look failed.

  “Of course, your Highness,” Leney said with a short bow. “Of course.”

  Chapter 31

  Leney glanced suspiciously over at Troy just as Troy was doing the same to him. “What are you looking at?” Leney challenged. He hadn’t liked the Knight from the moment he had come stumbling into the trailer. Even covered in ash and zombie blood, Leney could tell he had that annoyingly perfect all-American, starting quarterback look that he despised and was jealous of in equal measure.

  “I’m looking at someone who wants to get eaten by zombies, apparently.”

  “You think I’m scared of them or you? Hardly.” Leney scoffed and then began to mutter angrily, just on the edge of being heard. “Damn Queen. What the hell is she thinking sending me out like this? Crazy is what she is, making me go with this pathetic, little mother fu…”

  “Excuse me!” Troy hissed, grabbing his arm. “You need to quiet down, this instant. Look around you for goodness sakes. This is not the time for a tantrum. If you want to go back, then go. I would like nothing more.”

  Leney wished he could go back. It was insane to simply walk into an enemy camp, especially one that was about to be overrun by a horde of the dead. If he could go back it was something of a toss-up as to whether he’d go back as a sniveling servant begging for forgiveness or as an assassin.

  He had no doubt the Queen would win this fight with the Guardians, and Leney would bet his life that she would also beat the Black Captain and any other enemy she set her sights on. There would be riches and power beyond anything Leney could have ever dreamed—but it would come at a price to his dignity. Yes, even a murdering Corsair had his dignity and the Queen was constantly tearing his down.

  She kept pushing and pushing as if looking for his breaking point, as if a part of her hoped that he would rebel, or maybe come after her one night when she was alone. He had thought about it a lot, especially after she had cut his throat. The problem lay in the fact that killing her would be harder than it looked. Yes, she was tiny; even with her long black coat and high boots she probably only weighed a hundred and ten pounds. Tiny but fast. Tiny but always alert like a fox. Tiny but deadly.

  She didn’t just push him to the edge, she pushed everyone, herself included. Leney secretly wondered which would crack first: her or her army? More and more, she would talk to the wall or to a lamp. More and more, it was up to him or Donna or anyone with guts to try and straighten her out.

  The men had found it quirky and funny right up until she seemed to have lost her marbles altogether three days earlier. Instead of fighting the Guardians, she had set them to digging! Corsairs were not diggers, especially when there didn’t seem to be a sane reason for all the hard work.

  They dug here, they dug there; they dug up streets and widened ditches. They went at it for three days and nights until Leney had to warn the Queen that anymore and she’d have a mutiny on her hands. She didn’t listen. Instead, she had them throw the last of their strength into taking down a dam. Leney feared she had gone a step too far.

  But she had not erred in her judgment that men were simply: “Big boys with better toys.”

  Almost all of them were eager to see what would happen when a dam burst. They went at it with more gusto than Leney would have guessed and when the water came bursting out, they capered and cheered.

  Her pushing had worked out this time, but one day she would push it too far and when she went down, Leney knew he’d go down with her. The two were close to becoming irrevocably connected, and it grated on him to know that he would either be fated to be strung up beside her or be her chief whipping boy for all time.

  Since neither option was acceptable, he knew he’d have to jump ship, eventually. He just had to pick the right time and just then wasn’t it.

  “I’m not going back,” he growled at Troy, lying through his nearly clenched teeth. “I have a duty to see you safely to your town.” Of course, duty had nothing to do with it; the Queen’s anger could be volcanic, and he had the slowly healing scar across his throat as proof of it.

  For his part, Troy didn’t want the escort, nor did he need it. The Queen had aimed her latest rocket slightly to the south of the town and its ruined walls, and now the hundreds of zombies were stumbling in that direction with their grotesque heads thrust back, and their vacant, uncomprehending dark eyes staring upwards. With a direct route open, Troy could have made it back on his own. Even his leg had warmed up and was only slightly “twingy” if he stepped on something oddly.

  As he hurried along next to the still-grumbling Corsair, Troy tried to make some sense of the Queen and found it next to impossible. For reasons that were beyond him, she had saved him from certain death, and was now delaying her attack so he could make it back home. Was it guilt that drove her? Was it simple insanity? Or was it some terribly intricate scheme that he had no hope of unraveling?

  He feared it was the last of these.

  “To what end?” he muttered.

  Leney grunted out a laugh and whispered, “Stop trying. You’ll never figure her out. Sometimes I think I got a handle on her and then…”

  Troy dashed at him and hauled him down, clamping a hand over his mouth. Rage exploded in Leney and he was just reaching for his knife when a shadow moved. What he had mistaken for a boulder was a hugely rotund zombie. Its girth was so fantastic that its arms looked like the stubby wings of a penguin. It had fallen and was now trying to roll itself back to its feet.

  The two men crept away, crossing over the side of one of the hills when they saw Highton a few hundred yards away. With its walls in ruins, it looked old and ugly, as if it had been deserted for years. It was far from deserted. Even then they could hear a faint growling and the occasional clank of metal on rock. Not all the zombies had followed the flares the Queen had been sending up. Some had been pulled along by the steady slope of the hill and found themselves in the town.

  There were more of the beasts between the two men and the meager safety of the town. Some were stooped at the edge of the new river, drinking, while others were heading toward the muted sound of battle.

  It galled Troy that he was both wounded and without an adequate weapon. The AK 47 he’d been given was a weapon of last resort, and his bayonet was far too feeble to do much damage. If he’d had his spear, he would have rushed among them, and
crippled half a dozen before they even knew he was there.

  For his part, Leney had no intention of doing any fighting unless absolutely necessary. He tapped the Knight on the shoulder and began to slink around the dead, moving in a wide circle to the north before approaching the town. They were challenged by forty-eight-year old reservist Kaitlyn Renee.

  “I know you’re human,” she hissed. “And I got you dead to rights, so put those hands up or I’ll shoot.” Kaitlyn had always been more of a storyteller than a proper Knight and Troy recognized her voice. When he gave his name, she gushed: “Oh, praise the Lord! I heard a rumor that Duckwall said you were dead. Is that Justin you have with you?”

  “No. Regis didn’t make it. I checked him, personally. This is a Corsair. It’s a long story that I don’t have time for.” Troy was already picking his way through the mud and the pools of muck and the broken hunks of concrete.

  Kaitlyn watched him for a moment, a perplexed look on her face. “But he has a gun. Troy? Why does he have a gun?”

  “Because I’m not a prisoner,” Leney told her. “If anything, all of you are my prisoners.”

  Troy turned around to object to this only he slipped in the mud. Leney caught him and roughly set him back on his feet. “There you go, junior. Papa’s got you.” He took his muddy hand and tousled Troy’s brown hair, much to his embarrassment.

  Leney’s swaggering manner grew even more pronounced once they were past the broken jumble that had once been the wall. He rooted for a zombie that was being stabbed to death by half a dozen Knights, and he laughed aloud at the moat, saying, “We created a river ten miles long, and this is all you guys could manage? A ditch?”

  The Guardians close by were appalled at both what he’d said and how loud he’d said it. Troy took him by the arm and pulled him along, saying, “As of now you are my guest, but if you can’t control your tongue I will have you jailed.” The two glared hard into each other’s faces and Leney was tempted to test the young Knights Sergeant, only he knew more zombies were on their way and he didn’t relish the idea of being chained to the wall when they crossed the pathetic moat and tore apart the town.