The next thing Jillybean knew something slammed into her and threw her down onto the bloody deck. She couldn’t breathe or move as more bullets flashed over and around her, slapping with meaty thumps or making popping sounds as they punched through the hull.
“Are you hit?” Knights Sergeant Troy Holt cried almost directly in her ear.
Only then did she realize that she hadn’t been shot, she had been tackled by the Knight. “I don’t think so.”
“We can’t stay here. We’re too exposed.” He started to get up when a fast rustle of cloth rushed towards him. Troy dropped, crushing her beneath him again as one of the booms swung past, out of control.
“Get off!” Jillybean demanded, furiously. In spite of the danger, she struggled out from under the Knight and saw that the deck of the Queen’s Revenge was deserted. At first it appeared as if there were only corpses left to man the ship. Then she spied men crawling like worms down the stairs and others cringing, hugging the chewed-up teak deck. “Leney! Get these cowards up and get this boat pointed in the right damn direction, this instant.” The ship was spinning sideways to the wind and was taking on an unpleasant lean causing the corpses to slide over the side.
There were still two riflemen left, each trying to hide behind the other. She kicked the closest, saying, “The Corsairs have stopped firing, morons.” The reason they had, was just as infuriating as everything else. Mike had pulled the Calypso between the Queen’s Revenge and the Corsair ship.
“We’ll port around them,” Leney was telling his unwilling crew. “Come on! Everyone up.”
The Queen’s Revenge slowly got back up to speed and would have been too late to intercept the Calypso if the Corsair boat wasn’t being sailed so poorly. It tried to tack away from shore, losing headway and only managed to get some speed under her by heading west. She then turned unexpectedly east just as the Calypso turned west. The two boats almost collided and blew past each other with almost no room to spare.
“Now” Jillybean shouted to her crew. “Get between them before they can come together.” Leney shot through the gap only to have the two other boats make the most unexpected moves possible. The Calypso turned and headed straight north, aiming for the Black Captain’s lair, and the Corsair ship turned and sped directly at the Queen’s Revenge as if it wanted to ram the much bigger ship.
“Turn! Turn! Turn!” someone on the Corsair boat screamed, while at the exact same time someone was screaming the same thing at Leney. The two boats turned, but not fast enough. They came together, beam to beam, amid a blast of gunfire and a scream of wood. Jillybean’s two riflemen had screwed up their courage and leaped up at the last moment to fire over the side.
They almost couldn’t miss. Almost. One of the Corsairs tumbled down below deck, while the other two threw themselves into the harbor.
“Cease fire!” Jillybean ordered as the other boat…The Wind Ripper, she now saw, scraped white paint off the side of the Queen’s Revenge as it slowly began to spin away out of control. It didn’t spin far. Its boom was at the perfect height to catch the anchor chain of the Revenge and before anyone could stop it, the two ships were tangled.
Jillybean stared in disbelief as both ships began to slowly turn together like the hands of a clock. She couldn’t understand how The Wind Ripper of all ships had been caught up in this strange chase. “What am I missing?”
Everything, Ernest said, his voice rustling along the edges of the wind. Your men failed you. They let the Calypso get away on purpose. They’re all in this together. Tell Gerry the Greek to light off his bomb. You remember he has a bomb, don’t you?
She looked north. The Black Captain’s lair was two miles away and already the Calypso had a half mile head start. They would never catch her. “I remember the bomb.”
Use it now, Eve urged. The Captain is going to get Mike and Jenn, and you know what he’s going to do with them. A horrible bloody image struck her mind like a hammer blow, causing her to reel back into Troy. She tried to blink away the image, but with each blink the blood got redder and the terror on her friend’s ripped-up faces became more real.
Troy asked if she was okay, but she didn’t hear him, her head was filled with Jenn’s screams. They were so piercing that her eardrums stung and her teeth hurt. She clamped her hands over her ears and crushed inward, wishing she could crack her own head like an egg and let the screams fly out to infest the world. She was even looking around for a hammer when she saw a creature slink up from the galley stairs of The Wind Ripper.
It was a small zombie wearing Neil Martin’s face. It couldn’t be Neil, she told herself, but all the same, her mind began to swirl grey horrors into the bloody mix. Next, she saw one of the Corsairs in the water and he was pretending to be Stu Currans. “No,” she whispered. Now she knew she was on the verge of falling to pieces and there’d be no putting them all back together. She would crumble like sand and Jillybean would be gone forever; and maybe that would be good.
She wanted that bliss, but her eyes were still her own and they showed her a monster, a real, honest-to-God beast pull itself out of the harbor. It had no face. It was beyond hideous.
Without a word, she turned and went down to her cabin where she sat with her hands clamped over her ears, trying to mute the screams. What she had seen in the water and on the boat hadn’t been real. She knew that. And the screams weren’t real, probably. But the fact that Mike and Jenn were going to die was very real. And it was her fault. She had started the war without realizing that she would come to love her pawns.
She had told herself over and over: It’s for the greater good; it’s for the greater good, but now the only truly good people were going to die. Nothing could change that… “Unless I trade myself for them,” she said. For a moment this idea cut through the violence in her head. It was the perfect idea. She would die and Jenn would live. It was a perfect idea. Jillybean would have her evil raped and stabbed and tortured right out of her—and innocent Jenn Lockhart would live.
NOOOOOOO! Eve thundered. The screams suddenly grew into a hurricane of sound until she couldn’t think. Then in the midst of the noise she heard a door slam above her head and the patter of little running feet, followed by a wild screeching giggle.
“That’s not possible. There is no door on deck,” she whispered. “It’s wide open and…”
The floor is hot lava, Daddy! Quick, jump on the bed. Jillybean knew that voice. It was her own.
Not lava again, her Daddy said, laughing and clapping a hand on his forehead. We really should consider relocating. Dear? Can you grab a mop? We have hot lava again.
Jillybean could hear her mother’s light step in the hall, and with a rush of excitement, she ran to the door and flung it open. It wasn’t her mother on the other side. It was Knights Sergeant Troy Holt. Her mouth popped open. “What?” she barked as she looked past him, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mother. Just the hem of her skirt would do. Or just her shadow. Anything.
“The prisoners would like to see you, your Highness. They say they know you.”
“Don’t listen to them. They aren’t real.” She gave him a quick smile to show him that she was still normal. “Hey, you’re smart, aren’t you Troy? You could fight the Corsairs for me, right? I mean for Jenn. She should be queen and you would be her commander. I bet you could win. I’m thinking of leaving. Trading myself, really and I’m going to need someone to win this war for me. What do you say?”
Her eyes were rolling in her head and her hands shook as they clutched his uniform. He gently pried them away, saying, “Huh? Lead? Are you asking…? Do you want me to lead your Corsairs into battle against the other Corsairs?” He laughed and shook his head. “No. They would never listen to me. And you can’t trade yourself for anyone. This operation is already hanging by a thread.”
And so am I, Jillybean thought. It was a tiny filament holding her shrieking mind together and it wouldn’t last. She knew what would happen when the Black Captain started sending bloody pieces
of her friends to her: she would break and the whole house of cards would fall. It was better to get out in front of it. She would allow herself to be tortured to death in Jenn’s place.
Jenn would be queen and Troy would lead the army. Hearing it in her head caused a burst of laughter that cascaded and spread so that it sounded like a pack of hyenas were loose in her skull. She wiggled a finger in her ear, but the laughter kept going on and on. “He’ll be fine,” she lied to herself as she pushed past him and headed for the stairs. She had to hurry before the screams came again. The laughter was one thing but the screams would tear her apart. “We have a few minutes to go over some of the more obvious scenarios. The situation will be fluid, but as long as you keep the momentum going, you’ll have the advan…”
She had reached the deck where she saw the three Corsairs, kneeling, guns to their heads. They weren’t real. They couldn’t be real. Her mind was playing the sickest of cruel jokes on her. Averting her eyes, she turned to run back down.
“Jillybean,” Neil Martin said softly, stopping her.
“Stop talking to me. You aren’t real.”
“I am real. Turn around.” The voice was still Neil’s and it alone had the power to turn her. She wouldn’t look up, however, she stared at a bullet hole in the deck. “They tried to kill me, Jillybean, but they only changed my appearance. It’s still me. Look at me.”
Jillybean looked at his sagging grey face. He was more than half zombie by then. She glanced at Troy and asked, “Do you see that?”
“I see something. I just don’t know what, exactly.”
“And are the other two real?” He nodded. The fact that he and everyone else on deck were fish-belly white, told Jillybean that they were all seeing the same thing. “A zombie, a ghost and a monster,” she said, looking at each in turn, still uncertain, her mind teetering on the edge of inescapable madness.
“It sounds like the beginning of a joke,” Neil said. “A zombie, a ghost, and a monster walk into a bar.” He grinned hideously. “Can I get up now? I can’t feel my knees.” He didn’t wait for an answer and when he stood, she saw that he wore a single purple croc on his right foot.
Only Neil Martin would wear purple Crocs into battle.
Sudden laughter blared up from out of her and she threw herself into the arms of the zombie, crying, “It is you! Neil, I can’t believe it. And Stu!” Her heart swelled. She wanted to respect his wishes, whatever they were, but she couldn’t stop herself and she hugged him as well, whispering, “I’m sorry,” into his ear. When they parted, there were tears in his eyes and she wanted to hug him again and kiss them away.
She refrained, not knowing exactly what they meant. Instead, she turned to the “monster.” He had lost his mask and his face was revolting to look on. She didn’t care and hugged him, too.
“Jillybean!” Neil said, quickly. “Hold on. You don’t know who that is. That’s Gunner. You remember, from that little town in Alabama.”
Her laughter this time was pure and sweet and so loud that it drowned out the last of the screams, the whispers, and the giggles in her head until it was just her laughter that she could hear. Everything now was so wonderfully quiet in her mind that she touched her wild hair to see if she had been clubbed on the back of her head.
“Neil, your poor eyes must be playing tricks on you. This isn’t Gunner, this is your old friend, Captain Grey.”
No one had ever seen a stunned zombie before and it was so comical that once more Jillybean broke into peels of laughter that could be heard for miles. As much as Neil looked surprised, Grey looked angry, if a hideous, faceless being could look angry that is.
“I’m sorry, Mister Captain Grey, sir, but it’s time he knew the truth.”
“What truth?” Neil asked. “We…I thought you were dead. Deanna thought you were dead. Your daughter thinks it, too. Why would you hide like this?”
Captain Grey took a quick look around at the staring ex-Corsairs. He wasn’t used to being on display like this. “Not here.”
Jillybean escorted them below. They were followed by Troy, Leney and half the crew. She stopped Troy at the door. “Make sure we’re not disturbed. Leney, bring the fleet into the harbor, and send up the drones again. The rest of you. Find something to do. Get The Wind Ripper manned and fix whatever damage we’ve sustained.” She shut the door in their faces. She then turned back to the three men.
Although, for the moment, her mind was clear, her emotions were all over the board. Having Captain Grey with her was an immeasurable relief. Stu made her heart race out of love for him and fear that he still hated her. And Neil’s presence as a zombie made her both heart-breakingly sad and ragingly angry.
Neil grinned, an especially odd look for a zombie. “I never thought I’d have to bow to my own daughter,” Neil said, and then bowed, going so far forward that he fell.
Stu caught him. “She likes it better when you kneel.” He did so and she let him kiss her hand. Neil went down groaning, his knees popping. He too kissed her hand.
Grey would have none of it. He stood as tall as his warped body would allow with his tremendous arms folded across his massive chest. “It was supposed to be our secret, Jillybean.”
“It was, but now things have changed and she is going to need you and she would never trust anyone posing as Gunner of all people.”
“Then I’ll call myself something else. Deanna can’t know about me. It wouldn’t be right. I would…I would just ruin her life. Promise me you won’t tell her, Jillybean. And you too, Neil.”
He looked like he would take their heads off if they didn’t. Neil was still trying to wrap his mind around the idea that this beast of a man had been his friend. “I think you owe me an explanation first. After the explosion, we all thought you were dead.” Ten years before, the three of them had been instrumental in clearing the last of the bandits from around Bainbridge. Jillybean had created a cataclysmic explosion that had killed the great majority of the bandits, as well as Captain Grey, or so it had been believed by everyone but her.
“And I nearly was killed,” he rumbled, “and I would’ve been without Jillybean. She stitched what remained of me back together and every day for a year we both figured that each sunset would be my last. I had blood clots and infections and everything you could think of and yet, I never died. Jillybean said I was too pissed off to die and I think she was right. By the time we realized that I wouldn’t die, I knew that I had waited too long and that if I emerged as this freak, I would forever put Deanna’s life on hold. She would be stuck with this.” He pointed at what was left of his face.
Neil didn’t think it got any better to look upon no matter how much time passed and he had a green tint to his grey flesh. “I suppose I understand. Maybe better than anyone now. We’re once again two peas in a very ugly pod.”
Now that she knew they were real, Jillybean didn’t seem to find any of their faces difficult to look upon. She was smiling from ear to ear. Her eyes clear for the first time in months. “I’d like to promise I won’t tell, but things have a way of coming out under torture.”
“What torture?” Stu asked, a strange unpleasant sensation creeping in his guts. “What are you talking about?”
“The Black Captain will undoubtedly do things to me once we make the exchange. I’m going to trade myself for Jenn and Mike, but it will be okay. I see it now. I see how it will all unfold, perfectly.”
Epilogue
The Black Captain made his expected offer to meet with the Queen three hours after sunset. The message came by way of a rowboat, oared by two shifty-eyed Corsairs. “His lordship, the Black Captain would like to meet in two hours.” They gave the place: a muddy, half-submerged island along the north shore of the harbor. They then sat back with an air of superiority as they looked down their noses at the men who had once been their comrades.
Jillybean gave an answer that made their eyes go wide: “I will trade myself for your new captives. All of them. That will be the only deal I’ll ac
cept.” In minutes, the two were paddling back to the Captain as fast as they could. She watched them go with perfect satisfaction. Beside her, Stu was both apoplectic and too stunned to move. He was desperate to come up with some solution that would save her and the others. It seemed impossible and was made more so because he was the only one trying.
Captain Grey had only demanded that the trade include his daughter, Emily. When Jillybean heard that she had been kidnapped as well, she had blithely said, “Of course, she’ll be part of the trade. As much as I love Jenn and Mike, exchanging me for those two was going to be ridiculously uneven. This will make things fairer for both sides.”
“Is fairness really what we’re looking for here?” Stu demanded, speaking to the wall apparently. No one paid the comment any notice.
Neil, who loved both Jillybean and Emily equally, astonished Stu by winking a blood-red eye at Jillybean and saying, “Would you like a little scratch? Being a zombie takes the edge off of torture.”
“Take the edge off?” Stu growled. “Do you guys hear yourselves? Why do we have to trade anyone? If we win, we can get them back then.”
“That’s a big if,” Grey said. “I know for a fact that the Black Captain has some heavy-duty armaments. It’s safe to say he’s not going to go down easily. He’s going to turn this battle into a slog so that it takes days and days. And every day, he’ll make sure we know he has Jenn and Emily and Mike. He’ll torture them and record their screams and play them over loudspeakers, because he knows that it’ll drive Jillybean mad.”
Stu was being torn into pieces. He found that his love for Jillybean had not cooled in the slightest; he would kill for her or die for her. “Maybe they’ll take me.”
Grey shook his head while Neil gave him a sad smile and said, “I’ve been there, Stu. You’re just going to have to ride it out.” Stu was serious and began to splutter his sincerity. Neil faced him, taking his shoulders in both hands. “Stu, the fact is, the Captain doesn’t want you. He may not even want Jillybean. He might come back with an entirely different offer. We don’t know.”
Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned Page 53