The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

“It’s necessary,” she said. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

  Trust her? She was beautiful and smart and kind—he couldn’t stop thinking about her, but how could he trust a woman who had carried a pipe bomb on a supposed humanitarian mission? That hadn’t been Eve who did that, it had been Jillybean. “Listen, you have to quash this whole idea of being queen,” Stu said, as she let the moment draw out, looking as if she were on the verge of leaving, taking away the privilege of her presence. “If it was just you, I’d be good with it, but it’s going to be her as well. Think about what Eve would do with that much power.”

  “Trust me, I have given it more thought than you know. Now, if you don’t mind.” She clambered up on the armrests of the chair, holding up one hand until the place quieted. “I will stay and save you but you must believe in me and do as I command without hesitation. My anger can be as great as my love as these Corsairs are soon to find out.”

  The room let out a ghostly sigh and she knew that they were hers. They would believe in her and they would allow themselves to be commanded without question. They would fear her anger and crave her love.

  “I will now hear witnesses against the rest of them.” It went quickly. Dropping back down into the chair, Jillybean listened attentively, but with even more attentiveness, she gauged the crowd, discovering that four of the men, including Tony and Brian were truly, deeply evil, while the other four were less so, perhaps evil only by the product of their circumstances.

  Still each had committed murder and death should have been their reward, but Jillybean needed strong backs. There was a ton of work that needed to be done in a very short amount of time.

  “I have made my decisions,” she said, standing in front of her throne and gazing across the fire at Tony the only one of them who had the will to look up. She hesitated, holding the crowd hostage, building the moment so that when she said, “The Queen finds them guilty as charged,” they breathed out a huge collective sigh.

  Tony spat on the ground in front of him and she smiled, sadly, instead of wasting herself on anger. “There are varying degrees of guilt, however,” she said, jerking the crowd right back under her thumb. “And there will be varying punishments. The three on the end, as well as you in the blazer step to the side. By my grace and only by my grace, your lives are being spared for the moment.”

  The crowd buzzed like gossiping insects in uncertainty. This she stopped by focusing on Tony and the last three. “The rest will be killed by asphyxiation. This will be done immediately, but only after they have thanked me for my compassion and have apologized to you for the crimes they have committed.”

  “The hell I will,” Tony snorted, saying almost the exact words Jillybean had expected, and in fact hoped for. The first challenge to her rule was coming from the biggest and the baddest, and with ease she would bend him to her will, even at the point of death.

  “That is your choice,” she said, unperturbed. “Though I should warn you that if you don’t take me up on my generous offer, I will chain you up outside and ring a bell until the dead come and eat you alive.”

  He cursed, but it was reflexive and not loud. He didn’t have the strength to be loud. His muscles seemed to be coming unwound and he felt like lying down and wishing this whole thing away.

  Jillybean saw the look and was not gladdened by it. She hated this as much as he did, but it couldn’t happen any other way. “How many chains should I have brought over?” she asked the four. Two of them shook their head in horror at the idea and the other two, both Tony and Brian could only stare at the floor unable to say or do anything. “Then begin with your apologies.”

  The first began to mumble. “Louder!” one of the guards barked.

  “I-I’m sorry for k-k-killing…” He went on for a long rambling minute before finishing.

  “And now thank the Queen,” the guard said.

  An hour earlier it would have galled this hate-filled Corsair to grovel on his knees in front of a girl, now he was as emotionally wrung out as everyone else. His confession made it easier for the next two men. Then it was Tony’s turn. Before he could start, someone threw a length of rope at him and others began to moan like the dead. The warning was clear: They wanted him to fail.

  He had always told himself he wouldn’t beg for his life and cry like a bitch when it was his turn to go and yet he started in, begging these half-human creatures for forgiveness. It was horrible and humiliating, but it was better than being eaten alive. Even now that they had the upper hand, he didn’t think the people of the warehouse had the balls or the energy to carry out their threat, but Mike and Stu did and each had not relaxed their vigilance for even a second.

  Then, before he knew it he was thanking this crazy bitch for killing him nicely. Most of him still didn’t believe it. If their places had been reversed, he would’ve chosen that very moment to laugh in her face and then would’ve thrown her off the building with her own damned cat bell chained to her neck. That would have been something, watching her try to crawl away from the dead with a broken ankle.

  But she didn’t do that. She conferred with one of the sickly guards who shuffled off.

  While he was gone, she pronounced the other sentences: Death with a possibility of a reduced sentence—banishment—after a period of hard labor. The four jumped at the chance to become virtual slaves. They saw that it was far better than the alternative as the guard came back by with four black trash bags and a roll of duct tape.

  Jillybean’s quasi-regal bearing took a hit at the sight of them. She looked suddenly young and her cream-colored cheeks turned pasty. Mike didn’t look any better and, as brave as he was, he shied away from the garbage bags. Stu thought things were spinning along so quickly that he felt like he was always playing catch up. What he did know for certain was that Jillybean was taking an awful chance.

  Being part of four executions would bring out Eve and things that seemed so delicately and fortuitously balanced would certainly crumble. He tried to say something only to be stopped by Jenn of all people. “Remember the signs? The crows? Death has to happen. There’s no stopping it.”

  He didn’t scoff as he might have normally done. Signs and omens weren’t real and yet, when Jenn proclaimed having seen something in a flock of birds or a swirl of ash, she had been strangely correct too many times to ignore. It had been her signs that had guided them here…and she had mentioned the birds and what they meant.

  “It’ll be okay,” Jillybean said to them. “I’m prepared.” She stood once more and now it was all the cue her people needed to become quiet and still. She called for volunteers and had more than was needed as the fight was gone out of the four condemned men. They had their hands trussed behind their backs and were pushed to their knees. Jillybean did not ask if they had any last remarks.

  A simple nod began the procedure. The garbage bags were thrust down over the heads of the four and pulled tight so the heads all looked strangely similar, exceeding round and slick. Then, one at a time, the duct tape was wound round and round their necks until the air was cut off. They continued to breathe in the same hot air they had just expelled. When they sucked in, desperately trying to find the last molecules of oxygen all the onlookers could see the ghostly outlines of their faces.

  Everyone stared except Jillybean. Her vision went no further than the fire. She did not look past the dancing flames at the writhing men who fell to their sides one at a time where they squirmed like inchworms.

  Her mind drifted in a fully directed manner as the warehouse people, her people as she had to think of them now, oohed and ahhed over the deaths. Not that they were memorable deaths. They fell, squirmed for a bit, made animal grunting noises and then went still. The end was anticlimactic and the energy she had built earlier began to wane.

  After the last twitch, she took a long breath and stood, feeling all eyes on her. “Throw the bodies out back,” she casually ordered the four new slaves with a gesture at the bodies. With satisfyingly meek bows the newly
minted slaves hurried to grab the bodies. Stu and Mike went with them, holding their M4s on them warily. “Now for the hard part. We have to save them and we only have two days to do it.”

  Chapter 23

  Jenn was shocked, wondering if she had missed something. “Two days? Why two days? Why, what’s going to happen?”

  The girl was so small and so unassuming that she frequently blended in with the background and it wasn’t the first time Jillybean had overlooked her.

  “We have two days,” Jillybean explained, having recovered her wits, “because of the advance nature of their disease. They could go downhill quickly and die by the dozens if we don’t act fast.” This, at least was not a lie. The faces coming forward had a nightmare quality and sprang memories into her mind of the early days of the apocalypse when the dead had so recently been people. They were grey skinned, had sunken dull orbs for eyes, were covered in lesions and scabs, and walked with a sleepwalker’s uncertain gait.

  Some came up to gaze blankly at their new queen who was so full of vitality that it seemed to come out of her in a glow and if she happened to smile at one of them, they had the odd feeling of being “chosen” in some way making those around them exceedingly jealous.

  She smiled and nodded at them, with seeming innocence, but in truth she was gauging them, seeing who still had reserves of energy. They were not all equally sick, though it had made sense to fake it when Tony and his Corsairs had been in charge. But she was not so easily fooled.

  Her eyes fell on Willis Firam who had slunk to the edge of the crowd. He was one of the strong ones. Although his skin was stretched tight enough across his face to see the skull beneath, he was like an old, spindly root that had a wiry strength to it.

  The moment she set eyes on him, however, he faded out of the firelight’s glow. “Did you see the man in the tattered bathrobe?” Jillybean asked. “The one Stu had called Willis earlier?”

  Jenn knew Willis from their last trip through. He had appeared slightly mad and somewhat dangerous. Jenn did not relish walking out into the warren after such a man. There’d be no telling where he would be—unless you were Jillybean. “He’ll make his way to the offices,” she told Jenn.

  The offices were where the supplies had been kept under lock and key, and which were presently wide open. Now, Jenn had a new reason to be afraid. “You have a gun,” Jillybean reminded her. “And you may take the flashlight. Keep it off until you get close. You don’t want to scare them off.”

  Jenn didn’t want to argue about who was going to be the truly frightened one in the situation, especially as her mind clung to the pronoun Jillybean had used: Them. She was about to ask who the “them” were, but she held her tongue, knowing that Jillybean would probably either frown at her for not thinking on her own or lapse into a long explanation of human nature.

  It would boil down to the fact that humans did not wish to simply survive, they wanted to thrive, even at the expense of others. There would be people going after the supplies! Jillybean saw the understanding dawn on her. “Be firm and don’t be afraid. Bring them to me.”

  Jenn wanted to ask: What about Mike or Stu? Why wasn’t she having them do this? Again, she held her lips closed. There had to be a reason Jillybean was sending her, and there had to be a reason she trusted her. The thought buoyed her. Confidently, she grabbed the flashlight, and, out of habit, nearly turned it on before checking herself just in time.

  She was a ghost in the dark. With her small size and her practiced step, she made no sound as she came to the offices. There was light inside, the candles had not been blown out. There were also muted whispers. Jenn could imagine herself jumping through the doorway with her massive shotgun pointed and a look of vengeful wrath on her tiny features.

  Was that how Jillybean imagined the scenario unfolding? Almost certainly not. She expected Jenn to be herself, but also firm and unafraid, neither of which were good descriptors of her current state of morale. Even buoyed as she was she could only call herself pudding-like and shy.

  The flashlight helped and their reaction to it helped a great deal more. There were three men in the room, two poking through the boxes and one who was just in the process of picking up the pipe bomb. The sudden light had all three men jumping in spasms of fear; one shrieked, one began a panicked babble and Willis, the man holding the bomb, froze in place.

  “If I were you I’d put that down real slowly,” she said, the note of warning in her tone gave her an edgier sound than she had expected. She held Willis transfixed. “It’s a kind of bomb. A pipe bomb.” She kept the light on him until he set it back on the little end table. She then spun the light at the other two, both of whom had M4s slung on their backs.

  “These are ours,” one said, meaning the gun. “They belong to us.”

  “And the food is ours, too,” Willis said. “Them damn Corsairs took all this from us and,” he paused to lick lips that were so thin only a chicken would be jealous of them, “and we should get what’s ours back. That’s what would be fair.”

  Jenn was actually confused by one word. “Ours?” she asked before she remembered how the warehouse people used to live. The fractional infighting, the bickering, the commonplace thievery. Jenn felt a haughtiness come over her, wrapping itself around her; a warm blanket of superiority, because weren’t the Hill People better people? Then she remembered One Shot Saul. His death had been the one topic fiercely avoided and yet it lingered in their minds. Jenn hadn’t needed an autopsy to know he’d been murdered.

  She had been in the operating room with Jillybean and had seen the wound and had listened to the girl doctor as she had prattled on and on about the surgery, the risks, the likelihood of complications, even the possibility of death, which seemed very remote at the time.

  The murder was a big black flag that just hung there in her, shadowing everything she thought she knew about the people she still secretly considered her own.

  Jenn climbed down from her high horse and laid the gun aside. “Look, I understand. Especially after everything you guys have gone through, but I don’t think we’re going to do the usual that’s mine and this is yours, thing.”

  “That’s probably cuz you guys don’t have nothing,” he shot back. “We are all very happy you came and killed them Corsairs for us but that doesn’t give you the right to take our stuff. Everyone is gonna see that as soon as they come to their senses.”

  Don’t be afraid and be firm. She wasn’t afraid, but she didn’t know how to be firm. She was better at cajoling. “I think that’s just it. They won’t come to their senses if uh, uh…” She had almost called Jillybean by her real name and if anyone started calling her Queen Jillybean her rule would be very short. “If the Queen doesn’t save you guys, and she won’t with that sort of attitude, you’ll all be dead.”

  “Is she really the girl doctor?” one of them asked.

  “Oh yeah. I’ve seen her open a guy up who’d been shot. She pulled out all his guts, found the bullet, plugged like twenty holes and then stuffed all the guts back in exactly as they had been. And look.” She pulled back her own auburn hair to show the series of wide bandaids that covered her stitches. “I got shot in the head and she fixed me like that.” She snapped her fingers, impressing two of the men.

  But not Willis. He wore a look like he had just taken a sip of curdled milk. “A queen. It’s ridiculous. We’re Americans, damn it. We don’t do queens and princes and all that crap.”

  Jenn did not think of herself as American. America had died when she was very small and it was never coming back. She felt cheated whenever people talked about it as if she had missed something spectacular. “And we didn’t used to live in warehouses neither, so what? Things change and you’re gonna have to get used to it. You don’t want to make her mad, Willis Firam. The Corsairs made her mad and look what she did to them.”

  “How is what I wanna know?” one of the men asked. “All we heard in here was some screaming and then the bomb and the gunshot.”


  Since there were seven witnesses to what had happened in the room, there was no sense trying to lie. “The Queen is a little mad.”

  “In what way?” Willis demanded.

  “In a way that it’s best not to get her angry. Just trust me on this. Be her friend and she will give everything she has, but if you get her angry…” The image of the fire sweeping down and destroying Sausalito blinked into her mind. “I won’t say anything this time.”

  The two men with Willis thanked her, however he still had a curl of suspicion to his lip. “But what did she do? How’d she get them to give up their guns? Did you guys overpower them?”

  “You’ll have to wait until the gossip makes its rounds. In the meantime, she wants to see you three.”

  They looked back and forth from at each other in confusion. “Us three? She doesn’t even know us, does she?”

  “She knew you’d be here,” she said to Willis. He mouthed the word How, but lacked the breath for it to be heard. “And she told me to bring back anyone else I found with you. I’ll tell her that you were going to guard the supplies. She won’t believe it, but it’s better than the truth.”

  Of course, she didn’t believe it. Jillybean wore an open smirk as Jenn lied without the least amount of effort or conviction. Mike and Stu had returned from watching over the prisoners and were part of the crowd gathered around the throne. Both made faces and Mike started to grow angry, not at Jenn, but at Willis, assuming he had somehow tricked Jenn.

  “Just a moment, Mike,” Jillybean said, without looking at him. Her gaze was scorching into Willis, whose fake smile turned into a grimace. Her eyes bored into him, stripping away his outer flesh and peering deep inside to where his secrets lay, exposing them. He felt like an ant under a magnifying glass.

  Finally, she drawled, “You must really love your queen to go out of your way to guard her belongings, voluntarily. I applaud that.” Here she gave the smallest of golf claps, her hands so softly touching they barely made a patter. “And I will reward you. I will make you my quartermaster, in charge of all my food, my weapons, ammunition, medical supplies and all the rest. How does that sound?”