Jillybean, small, slim, and dressed head to toe in black, was a shadow and made little more noise than one as she led them down the pier to the backlot of the warehouse. Her nerves hummed like live wires and her senses were amped; she picked up the horrific intensity of the smell and paused where the pier met the land. Looking into the water, her mind blurred.
“Utter morons,” she seethed, before she could regain herself. She turned away as the others went to the rail and looked over. There were more wretched, deteriorating bodies here. At least fifty of them, piled in a huge, vile pyramid that rose up out of the water nearly to their toes.
Jenn turned away, gagging, regretting her dinner which felt like it was expanding inside of her, looking to burst up out of her throat. She walked away, quickly gulping in air with Mike hurrying alongside, grateful for an excuse to be away. Stu held his ground, but did so with his teeth gritted.
Jillybean didn’t linger, she wanted to be away from the smell as much as anyone and went to stand near Jenn until the girl got hold of herself. When she said, “I’m alright,” in a breathy, unconvincing whisper, Jillybean gave her a quick nod and turned in the direction of the back entrance, though did not go to it directly.
She took a slight detour heading to a towering metal pole that was topped by a rack of six huge lights that looked like all-seeing mechanical eyes. Jillybean looked up the pole’s length, then tapped it lightly with a knuckle. Satisfied by the hollow sound her fist had produced, she dug in her bag and took out a half-gone roll of duct tape; she handed it to Stu along with one of her pipe bombs.
The others looked at each other in shock. Mike found his voice first. “Why? Why do you have a bomb?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, a harsh voice erupted from Jillybean’s throat, snarling, “Shut the hell up! Who the hell do you think you…”
Too late, Jillybean snapped her mouth shut and turned away, trying to get herself back in place. When she could, she apologized and explained, “It’s a precaution. From what you described of these people they could be getting desperate and dangerous. I’m putting the bomb here so no one gets hurt. It’ll be a warning if we need it.”
A youthful guilty look swept Mike. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t…it’s just maybe you should have told us.”
“You would’ve argued with me which would not have helped in any way. Clearly, my mental state can only be considered fragile and none of us want it to tip in the wrong direction.” She paused, looking for their nods and receiving them. “Good. Now, when I said let me do all the talking I suppose I should have stressed the word all. If I need your help, I’ll let you know.” Her tone had been brittle and cold. She was definitely walking the razor’s edge.
They followed after Jillybean to the rolling door they had used to gain access weeks before. There were piles of trash and crates stacked in front of it. Not far from it was another door; it was locked. Jillybean tried knocking on the door with her small fist; it made only a muffled thudding so she used the butt of her hunting knife.
Whispered voices could be heard beyond the door, although what was said she didn’t know.
“They’re in there,” Jillybean remarked seemingly to herself. “Now hush and let me deal with this. You stick to medicine and bonatony or whatever.”
“It’s botany.”
“Same difference. I want to stretch my legs. Let me do the walking and you do the talking. What do you…”
She cut herself off, growling through gritted teeth, both her fists were balled, the knuckles sharp and white like little mountain ranges. “Stop it, please! Both of you. All of you!” She turned to glare at Jenn, Mike and Stu, who hadn’t said a word and were now shocked into an even deeper silence than they had been.
Jillybean recovered enough to begin an apology only to be interrupted by the sly scrape of a key in the lock.
“Who is it?” a soft, spiritless male voice asked.
“My name is Jillybean Martin. I’m a doctor. I’ve heard that you were in need of one and have come to offer my services.” She had managed to corral the crazy inside of her and she certainly sounded the part of a doctor. She didn’t much look like one, however. The mask was a smart touch, but it was bookended by a flying mass of hair on one end and scruffy, black high-tops on the other.
The door opened an inch and a pale, watery eye affixed them. “You really a doctor? You got pills?”
“You need more than pills, and yes, I am a doctor. Please, let me speak to whoever’s in charge.”
He hesitated, looking as though he wanted to tell her something, a whispered confession or a bawdy secret. In her state, Jillybean couldn’t tell and the moment passed. “You’ll need to put up them guns,” the man told her.
“We’ll sling them,” Stu said. Although they had never been asked this before from the fractured group, it wasn’t an unreasonable request and the three slung their rifles over their shoulders. Only then did the man pull the door open the rest of the way, staggering them as the stench—sour feces mixing with the ripe odor of decomposing human flesh—reached a crescendo.
“Follow me.” He left them, mingling with the dark after only a few uncertain steps.
They did not follow right away. They couldn’t. Jenn lost her fish against the side of the warehouse, while Mike doubled-over, his hands on his knees, fighting not to lose his. Stu was staring up at the stars, blinking rapidly. Only Jillybean, who was no longer actually Jillybean stood her ground.
Eve had taken her place. The assaulting odor had had a familiar note to it, one reminiscent of hell and Eve knew all about hell. She had been building her own personal hell for years, and this was nothing compared to it. She wanted to laugh at them and taunt them cruelly, only they were all so affected they wouldn’t have felt the full sting of her barbs.
Soon, she thought to herself. Without the hated pills keeping her down, she would be spending more and more time on top and she would order the world the way she saw fit. She would order it as queen, and as disgusting as these people were, she needed subjects to rule. “Come on,” she barked, clapping her hands together twice like a football coach. “It’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad?” Mike cried. “Are you kidding me? This…this is worse than I thought. We’re probably getting sick just breathing this stuff in.”
Eve expected to have to fight him to get him in, but help came from the most unlikely corner. “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay,” Jenn told him, in a shaky voice. She had yet to affix her mask and they could see the sweat on her brow. She was so pale her pink nose stood out even in the gloom. “We’re supposed to go. The signs all point to it.”
A snort of surprise escaped Eve as this simple “logic” worked. She filed it away under “people will believe any old crap,” for later use.
The odd, sick little man who had opened the door was nowhere to be seen as they entered the cavernous building which was alive with whispers. The whispers in the dark, especially as they came from all over: in front, behind, above, were unnerving to three of the four. Eve felt right at home.
Mike pressed Jenn to his side and although he had been told to sling his rifle, it was only barely so and with a quick move he could have it out and pointed in a flash.
“You know you have a flashlight,” Stu reminded Eve.
Eve pulled it out eagerly, not because she was afraid of the dark, a laughable idea, but because she figured the display of technology would overawe the “savages” as she saw them. When the light pushed back the darkness, she wasn’t far off in her assessment.
Dozens of vile sub-humans had clambered down from their hive-like domiciles and were now congregating around the four. With the light, their fear dissipated and was replaced by empathy. The people were wraiths, their skin stretched tight over weak, thin bones. For the most part they possessed blank eyes, absent of the desire for life. They seemed only to be waiting on the inevitable.
Stu spotted Willis Firam, the man who’d been in charge the last time they had come through.
Three weeks in these conditions had turned him shaky and frail. “Willis? Hey? We’re here to help. This is the girl doctor, the one in the rumors.”
Willis appraised them with unsteady concentration, his head tilting back and forth as he squinted.
“Don’t talk to him,” a man coming out of the shadows ordered. “He’s no one.” Willis bowed his head and pulled back into the crowd, apparently unable to withstand the man’s gruff, husky tenor.
Eve splashed the light into the man’s face, blinding him. She caught a glimpse of dark, bulging eyes, a beak of a nose, and a white scar on one cheek before he threw an arm across his face. “Turn that damned thing off.” She held him frozen by the light for a moment longer only because she could, and then slowly lowered the light, inspecting his person.
He was thick set with wide-splayed legs. At his hip was an empty holster and in his hand was a revolver; a .38 with wood grips and six-inch barrel.
“I said turn it off. Wait. You got a battery? And you waste it? What the hell is wrong with you?”
She didn’t turn it off. Eve was not about to be ordered around by the likes of this scum. One pistol against three rifles? He was mad to speak to her that way. “I guess you don’t know who you’re talking to so I’ll let your tone pass for now. And if I need another battery, I can always make one.”
He shielded his eyes with his hand and gazed over it, his eyes scrunched down over his beak of a nose as he tried to make out her face. He didn’t know her and didn’t know why he should. She was cute; he liked that. And she could make batteries, and he liked that even more. He missed the ease of batteries and electricity.
“Come on. The boss is definitely going to want to see you guys.” He whistled, a signal and received one in return, causing the four to hesitate.
“Who’s this boss?” Stu asked. “I didn’t think you guys had a single leader.”
The man snorted in derision. “Whatever leaders they had, crapped themselves to death like all the rest.” It was a cold answer and once more the four exchanged looks.
They followed warily as the man led them deeper into the warehouse, while all around them came more whispers. These quieted as they came to a building within the building. Before the apocalypse it had been where the white-collar workers had kept the endless flow of papers going. After, it was where the survivors stored their food and ammo. Now it was the home of the Boss.
The man with the big nose and the sly air stopped in front of the door. His name was Brian Troutman. He was thirty-nine and had been in the Arizona penal system when the zombies had first come. “You’re going to have to drop the guns. Leave ‘em right up against the wall.” He hadn’t holstered his pistol, though it wasn’t exactly aimed at them.
“Tell your boss to come out here,” Eve said, blinding him with the flashlight. “Tell him I’ve followed his rat as far as I’m going to into his hole.”
“Wow,” he answered, more amazed than insulted. “I will definitely tell him that. Don’t you worry about that, but first drop the guns.” Now his pistol was aimed, the deep black bore pointed directly into Eve’s stomach. She was about to laugh at the man, only there was something in the way he held himself—He’s not afraid, because you’re surrounded.
The voice came out of the dark of her mind. It had been the smug, overly confident, know-it-all voice of Jillybean. “Surrounded by what? Rabble?” Eve sneered, turning from the pistol and shining her light behind them. Just as she had figured, the sick and the dying had dragged themselves out of their death shrouds to see the new-comers. The ragged crowd stood thirty feet back, swaying, barely able to hold themselves up.
“You think I’m supposed to be afraid of this pathetic bunch of…” Her mouth stopped working as she saw the first shotgun pointed their way. Slowly she revolved her flashlight. There were six men with guns; one at each corner of the building and four interspersed among the sick, using them as human shields.
Eve would have gunned them all down, if that had been a viable option, but the four were surrounded and caught out in the open. She was crazy but not stupid.
“As I was saying,” Brian said from behind as he pressed his revolver into the back of her head. “Drop the guns.”
Stu and the others did, but Eve held up Jillybean’s dainty hands and turned. If Brian had expected her to be afraid he would be disappointed. Eve didn’t know fear. “Why would I need a gun to deal with the likes of you?”
Brian wasn’t disappointed. He was impressed and eager, knowing he would get his turn with her, knowing he would have a chance to break her, to either snap her spirit or wear it away until it was nothing but a feeble shadow. It was his idea of fun.
“You’re not afraid? Perhaps you don’t know who you’re dealing with. We’re Corsairs and you’ve made a big mistake coming here. But don’t feel too bad. It’ll be your last mistake.”
Chapter 20
The news that these were Corsairs had no effect on Eve whatsoever. She had known they were bad men from the very start and whether they called themselves Corsairs or clowns made no difference to her. They were men and that alone made them potentially dangerous.
Eve always had the same reaction to anything dangerous, and that was to grind it under her heel.
While the others couldn’t hide their fear, though they each tried with varying degrees of success, Eve still gazed on Brian Troutman with a contemptuous sneer. “You’re Corsairs? Really? That’s impressive, what’s more impressive is that you’ve managed to take over a giant, overflowing outhouse all by yourselves. I bet back when you were living in the backseat of a Chrysler with your crack-whore of a mother you never thought you could have all of this.”
She beamed the light around at the two hundred or so wasted creatures who did not look all that different in appearance than the early zombies. They were purposely dull-eyed, carefully on guard against hope, which couldn’t be risked.
Brian snatched the light out of her hands. “Frisk them,” he ordered the others before doing a search of Eve focusing his hands entirely on her breasts and between her legs. She lost her mind at this, turning savage and attacking him with a raking hand that opened his cheek in three parallel grooves.
This only excited him more. He easily swung her arm behind her back and pinned her against the wall. She snarled curses as he ran his hand over her curves without bothering with the pretense of looking for weapons. As much as he liked the cursing, she was being loud and he gave her arm a quick jerk upward almost to the point of dislocating it. Almost.
This shut her up and had Stu and Mike on the verge of attacking him despite the guns pointed their way. “Where’s your smart mouth now,” Brian asked.
“I think she might be clean,” a man said in a deep rumbling bass, from the door. Brian didn’t dare shine the light on him and the man was only an immense shadow filling the doorway. “Bring them in. Courteously, Brian. Don’t spoil my prize with those dirty hands of yours.”
“Right. Sorry.” Brian let go of Eve in an instant. A foolish move considering Eve, on her best day, was barely civilized. She was primal. The original Eve. Her conscious was filled with only the very base emotions: hate, anger, self-love and, since it stirred such passion within her, revenge.
The second she was released, she turned with shocking quickness and shot her knee into his groin with such savage strength that he collapsed in a ball, his breath drawing ever inwards and his face so bright red that the scar stood out like a white knife.
Although the man clearly deserved it, both Mike and Stu cringed, while around them, the Corsairs, far from displaying an ounce of anger, burst into gales of laughter that echoed throughout the warehouse. Perhaps stirred up by their acknowledgment, Eve went to stomp him in the face.
“Enough,” the man in the doorway said. Abruptly, Eve stopped and followed the dark man inside. The others were forced to step over Brian one at a time; he made no move to get up, but lay there breathing in gasps.
They followed the man to an office wh
ich was strangely arrayed. One side was completely taken up by cardboard boxes, which narrowed the room into a rectangle. At one end of the rectangle was a heavy wooden chair like one would find at the head of a dinner table set for a petty noble. It was ornately carved and padded with red velvet cushions all of which were lined in little brass studs.
To the right of the chair, two women sat on either ends of an enormous and strangely puffed-up white couch. It was almost as if they were sitting on an anchored balloon. On either end of this monstrosity were spindly tables hoisting candles. Between the two women was several feet of shadow, a sort of no man’s land.
The closest of the women had autumn-leaf yellow hair that glinted gold, flickering in tune with the candles. She was a small-breasted woman who tried to hide the fact by thrusting her chest out like a young cadet. Her steel collar told them she was a slave, the fact that it was a thin, demure ring, entwined with gold told them she was a favored slave.
The girl on the far side of the expansive couch was bubbly and nervous. She gave way to controlled laughter at the slightest provocation. It was a small laughter as if she had no innate sense of humor and was worried that she would miss a joke when one was eventually told. She wore the miniest of miniskirts and the tightest of t-shirts. Her collar was so thin it would have been mistaken for a necklace had they been in a different time and a different place.
All of this dimmed into the background as the big man took his seat, sitting in it as if he were a king. Two aggressively arrogant eyes dominated his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning forward as if he might suddenly rush on a person and club them with his huge hands. He had beautiful dark skin and a perfectly round, bald head that gleamed in the candlelight.
The four filed in with Stu coming to stand next to Eve, who said, “My, but you are a scary one. Like the antichrist. Is that how you think of yourself? All powerful? Well, you’re nothing but a piece of…”
The Queen of the Dead Page 19