Instead of grabbing his gun, she scraped up a gob of snot and spat in his face. “Are you just going to take that? You gonna let a little girl spit in your face? Do you want to hit me? Do you? I said DO YOU?” Her scream sent him up onto the tips of his toes.
“Here. Take it.”
He gave up his shotgun. This time she handed it to Jenn. “Feel the power. Make them afraid of you. The secret is not being afraid to die.”
“I’m not afraid to die,” Tony said, having finally gathered his wits. He pulled his .44 caliber Double Eagle. He was a big man and felt his guns should be big as well and the Eagle was a huge hunk of metal. “This is your last chance to make a deal.”
She sauntered up to him without the least fear as he pointed the weapon. “Would you like to do it on the count of three?” She held up the detonator. “One.” She took another step forward.
“I’m not playing,” he warned.
“Good, because I’m not either. Two.” She took another step…and he fired the gun. Everyone in the room flinched at the gunshot; everyone but Eve. She had welcomed the bullet, but it passed through her mass of hair, clipping strands that fell across her vision. Her smile faded and a look of disgust replaced it.
“Pathetic,” she said.
Tony looked like he was treading water in a dark sea with something terrible somewhere beneath him. His gun was no longer pointed with what anyone would call assurance. “How do we know you guys won’t kill us?”
“I would say that you’re just going to have to trust me, but that would be crazy, right? But you can trust him.” She looked back at Stu who hadn’t budged and still looked ready to spring. “He’s a friggin’ boy scout. Isn’t that right, Stu? You would never hurt these evil, butchering Corsairs.”
“Not if I give my word,” he answered. “Give up your guns and we’ll let you walk out of here, unharmed. That is a promise.”
But without weapons and food? That struck Tony hard. He had been part of the raiding party that had followed the Saber south. With confidence that crossed the border into outright stupidity they had come up that hill without a plan, expecting an easy time of it. Then the dead had come. Wave upon wave of them, crashing out of the forest.
They had been everywhere eating people or tearing them limb from limb. Tony had tried to get back to his boat or any boat for that matter, but he was cut off. Grabbing what men he could—and the two girls who had appeared out of nowhere—he figured he would hike to the other side of the bay and get picked up there, only the Corsairs fled and he and his group had been hounded for two straight days by the dead, driven north east until they saw a smudge of smoke on the horizon.
And now he would be forced out there again. But the girl was certifiably crazy. It wasn’t an act. She would kill them all and cackle madly while she did so. But what choice did he have? His only consolation: he was thirty-eight and he had survived a lot worse.
“Here,” he said, holding out his gun. She took it and sniffed the hot barrel, sending a wave of pleasure through her.
“Now the rest of you,” she said. With heads lowered they handed over an assortment of rifles and shotguns. Now armed again, Stu and Mike moved them to stand against the boxes. One at a time they were frisked, the two only taking ammo and weapons. Some of the men had lighters or small pocket knives; a few had little bits of food stashed. They would need every little nibble and neither man could, in good conscience, take these morsels.
“What about our coats?” Brian asked. “It’s cold outside.”
Eve laughed at the request. “There’s an entire city filled with coats. You can have all of those you can carry. Let’s get those hands in the air and come on out the door. The sooner you’re gone, the sooner you’ll be someone else’s responsibility.”
It was an odd thing to say but only because it was Eve who had said it and it went unnoticed by the shell-shocked Corsairs who were heading out the door and by Mike and Stu who were entirely focused on them, ironically nervous now that they were moving away from the bomb.
Only Jenn took real notice. Like every child of the apocalypse, she had recovered her senses with amazing speed. “Who would be responsible for them? What’s that mean?” She had come to realize that neither Jillybean or Eve tossed about words uselessly.
“Hold on, will you?” Eve purred. They had just trooped out into the dark expanse of the warehouse and she could feel hundreds of hidden eyes on her. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear them whispering or coughing. The people were naturally curious and properly afraid.
Screams and gunshots had become a daily occurrence, however the explosion seemed to mark some sort of monumental change and now they were watching the Corsairs being led out at gunpoint and there was big Tony with his hands at shoulder height along with the rest of them. The only thing that could have surprised them more was if he squatted out a litter of pups right there on the floor.
“Stop!” Eve commanded and they stopped.
“What are you doing?” Stu demanded. Even in the dark, he knew that smile of hers. “I promised we wouldn’t hurt them.”
She nodded. “Yes, a promise is a promise and I agreed to it, but they didn’t.” She clicked on her flashlight and illuminated two hundred people in the achingly long throes of death. “How many of them have been wronged by these subhuman pieces of garbage?”
Tony turned on Eve and whispered savagely, “We had a deal!”
“And we still do,” she replied, mildly. “At the same time, I owe a duty to my people.”
“Your people?” Stu asked, wondering if he had missed something. Had she changed again to some new person he had never seen before?
No, her eyes still flashed with greedy hunger. Eve was still solidly in charge. She had made her promises but that didn’t mean she had to forgo any fun. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she called out at the top of her lungs. “My people. I am your new Queen!” Although she had said this in triumph and even paused for applause, the statement was met with only silence.
She wasn’t disappointed. They would come to love her…and fear her.
“I have freed you from your oppressors and soon I will heal you of this terrible sickness, but right now we must deal with an unfortunate task. I need to know if these men have wronged you.”
“We had a deal!” Tony said again. His desperation made his voice shake and that was all the evidence she would ever need to convict.
She turned her terrible gaze on him, raising the Desert Eagle. “Get on your knees. I will make you if you don’t and I won’t be nice about it.” She lowered the barrel of the gun until it was aimed into his crotch. Hissing curses, he got down. “The rest of you, now,” she commanded.
All but Brian knelt. He stood there, shaking his head, chewing his lip, not noticing as it began to bleed. Eve wasn’t going to ask twice. She walked right up to him aimed the Eagle from a distance of two feet and deafened his left ear as she fired it for effect only. It was like someone had stabbed a pen into his ear. His brain felt like jelly that had been hit with a hammer. She was still there pointing the gun when he looked back up, only now it had switched to his other ear. He knelt along with the rest of them.
Eve had never felt so huge. She gazed down at Brian, snorted and walked away. “You no longer have to fear these…pirates.” She spat the word out and then actually spat, splattering a gob, next to Tony. “Now if anyone has been hurt or harmed by these people, now is the time to say something and as your Queen, I will make sure they receive the proper punishment.”
She paused, feeling the room, waiting for the inevitable and sure enough someone said in a carrying whisper, “Tony killed ol’ John McGuvee.”
“Did he murder him?” Eve asked. The voice, louder now, agreed, that had been the case. “Did anyone else see this?” Heads nodded and a few whispered timidly, I saw it. “Okay what about Brian? Is he innocent of any crimes?” Soft laughter from the crowd.
“He even worse,” someone said. “He done all the boss-man dirty w
ork. He killed plenty, offin’ all them that was too sick.” This seemed to open the floodgates and now there came so many whispers that Eve couldn’t follow them all especially those that came up from inside her own head demanding that she get revenge. These were especially bloodthirsty and chilling, yet Eve was not like Jillybean and she reveled in the voices.
She went down the line of eight men, all in their thirties, all strong, all gritty survivors and all were killers. Names of victims were shouted from the crowd—they had killed dozens, weeding out the sickest and those who showed the slightest resistance to their rule.
“We were following orders,” one of the Corsairs said in his defense. “Tony would have killed us, too if we hadn’t.” He was booed down by the crowd and someone threw a shoe at him, striking him in the back of the neck.
Stu held his gun on the Corsairs, looking ready to blast them all if any of them moved, but he didn’t think he could. They were hateful, evil men…and he had given his word. And he didn’t think he could execute them, either.
Eve seemed to be able to read his mind. “So, are you going to let these murderers go free, Mister Boy Scout?”
“I don’t know what to do with them,” he said, after a long pause and a glance at Mike, who gave a noncommittal, boyish shrug. Mike suddenly looked like a kid and Jenn, holding a shotgun nearly as tall as she was, like a girl playing dress-up. Neither truly wanted to be a part of this.
“I know that I’m not smart enough to know what the right thing to do is and neither are you.” Eve’s eyes narrowed and a snarl began to form, but Stu spoke over it. “You need to bring Jillybean back. You need her to help all these people anyway, right? If you don’t you’ll be queen of an empty warehouse. Is that what you want?”
“No, but this is the best part,” she whined, stamping her foot like a toddler. “And I just got to be Queen anyway. It’s still my turn. She is going to have to wait.”
Stu sighed, getting a glimpse of fatherhood. “Do you even know what’s wrong with these people?”
“You heard baldy, it’s something about the water.”
“No, the name of the disease. Jillybean called it like collar-something.” Eve started shaking her head. He went on, “You’ll need to know it if you want to help these people. Collar…”
For a moment her mind wavered, then she regained her footing. “Cholera. It’s cholera and they are my people, ‘these’ people as you…”
“No, Jillybean called it something else,” Stu said, going on. “It sounded foreign. Like Italian or something. It was vibrio something.”
“Italian? Jillybean doesn’t know Italian. But vibrio isn’t Italian, it’s…” She blinked and appeared drunk for a moment as she teetered. “It’s Latin. Yes, Latin. Basically, it means ‘to vibrate’ since the bacterium in this rather laxly ordered genus are motile, meaning they move through a series of undulations. Stu, uh what’s going on? Who are these people?”
Chapter 22
Jillybean was back and the first thing that struck her was the smell. She had a mask uselessly dangling around her neck. She snapped it back in place as Stu explained what had been happening. He gave her a four-sentence abridged version of events, but with the sensory clues being fed to her second by second, it was enough.
“I’m a queen. Interesting.”
He gave her a searching look. “That was Eve. That was her being childish.”
“Yes, it sure was,” she agreed. “I’m just afraid what will happen when she comes back and she’s not a queen. Her temper tantrums can be deadly. Besides, from what you’ve told me about these people they are in need of some sort of central authority.”
She was probably right. “But a queen?” he asked. “Really?”
Jenn had overheard most of what they had been saying. “Aren’t all queens kinda bad?” The only queens she had ever heard about were evil ones from stories her father had read her during that brief interlude between her mother’s death and his. “And are we gonna have to call you, ‘your Highness’ or something like that?”
“I haven’t given it that much thought. All the same, I will need some sort of honorific.”
“Can’t we talk about this later?” Mike asked. “We gotta figure out what we’re going to do with them.” As they had been talking, the eight prisoners had been whispering back and forth, making Mike very nervous.
Jillybean appraised them, and where Eve’s eyes had been alight with fiery madness, hers were disconcertingly cool. Tony opened his mouth. She cut him off before he could say a word. “You will have your turn to speak. Until then be quiet.” Louder, she addressed the crowds. “I need eight of the least sick among you to step forward.”
Only six men and women came shuffling forward; one of the men attempted a formal bow, only he inexplicably bent his knees at the same time, turning the bow into a crooked bob. Jillybean divided the group in two, sending half to get wood for a fire and the other half to get extra weapons to help guard the prisoners.
When it was heard what Jillybean wanted, fifteen others joined the first six and soon there were plenty of guns pointed at the Corsairs. Someone even brought the big chair Tony had used as a throne, which Jillybean didn’t hesitate to plant herself in, sitting across from what amounted to a bonfire, staring at the prisoners.
“Let’s dispense with this unpleasantness,” she began, speaking in a clear distinct voice. “Would anyone like to bring official charges against this man?” She pointed at Tony, knowing he was the leader but not knowing his name. There was some hesitation and she added, “You have nothing to fear from these men. They cannot hurt you anymore. Now, I ask again, would anyone like to bring official charges against this man?”
Every hand in the room went up. “Lacking physical evidence, I will need at least three witnesses to any one of his murders.”
“We all saw him kill Maevis,” someone said. “He hit her with a hammer, square on the head, right over there by the exit door. She was trying to escape and he wanted to make her an example, is what he said.” Heads went up and down and murmurs of agreement went around the room.
Jillybean turned to Tony who threw on a counterfeit smile that fooled no one. “This is going to be my trial? A bunch of people ganging up on me? That isn’t fair.” Jillybean said nothing to this. She only sat, staring at him with an expectant air. The sweat on his glistening bald head began to run in rivulets. “Look, they were sick when we got here and I was trying to do my best under the circumstances. Th-that woman? She was stealing. She was trying to run off with valuable supplies. What was I supposed to do?”
“Is this true? Was she stealing supplies?”
One man yelled out, “Hell no!” A second later the entire place erupted with people screaming curses and throwing things. Jillybean let it go on for some time before she stood and raised her arms. “Enough. The defendant will now call his own witnesses.” When the warehouse people began to murmur angrily she cried, “Silence! If we wish to be a fair and just people we must allow the accused their day in court. Besides, he may only call reputable witness. Other Corsairs are not considered reputable or credible for that matter.”
There had been a ray of hope in Tony’s eyes but now that was gone. He began blowing like a bull, his eyes darting. His anger a physical force that was almost palpable, made the warehouse people tremble.
Jillybean was not outwardly affected by this display and only sat perfectly straight upon the throne with that infuriating calm of hers. She waited sixty seconds before asking, “Well?”
“This isn’t fair! You made a promise!”
“Do you have a witness to call or not? There are plenty to choose from.” The warehouse people found this cold jab hilarious and those with the strength cried out pick me, pick me as they waved their hands. Of course, Tony could pick none of them and he only stood there in a rage, cursing under his breath until Jillybean pronounced him guilty.
This revived the people even more and many yelled out to kill him right then and there with a
dozen ideas, all of them sickening. Jillybean felt her head swirl at them and she could feel Eve inside of her eager to come out, eager to get to skinning Tony alive, or boiling him to death, or sawing him in two lengthways.
“No,” she said, standing, one hand on the arm of her chair to steady herself. “I will not be the Queen of scum. If I am to be queen it will be of a civilized people. So, decide right now if that is what you want. Do you want to give in to your primal lusts or do you wish to be saved? Do you want me as your queen or do I let the Corsairs have you?”
In a flash the ones calling for revenge clapped their hands over their mouths and the others who had only been wishing for it in the dirty warrens of their corrupt little hearts, held their breath. Instinctively, she was playing them perfectly, pulling at the thin shreds of their emotions, doling out hope with one hand and withholding it with the other. She dangled it over their heads like a master holding a treat for a begging dog.
Ten minutes before, having a queen as their leader would have been laughed at, now they were pleading for her to stay, a few even crawling forward, saying, “Please, please, please.”
Every time he heard the word “queen” Stu felt like he was slipping deeper into some bizarre dream and each time, he couldn’t help sneaking a quick glance at Jillybean as if he might see Eve peeking out from her bushy hair or lurking in the depths of her eyes, with her hands on the levers and gears working the girl’s body.
But he saw nothing of the sort. In the warm glow of the dancing fire she seemed to fade in and out, still he could see perfectly her full lips and the soft curve of her face. Just then she was absurdly beautiful and he could tell everyone thought so, as well.
Jillybean turned suddenly and he jumped as if she could read his thoughts. She always seemed to be reading him, while to him she was an utter blank. Eve was the opposite: an open book, her feelings spilled out of her like molten lava; as if they had to come or they would destroy her.
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