The wind was pushing the boat so far over that Gavin rolled down the sloping deck and nearly went right into the Sound. Next, the lantern tumbled into the hold where the flame thankfully blinked out. And still the boat kept leaning further and further, until Emily found herself looking almost straight down at the water. Her mind screamed the obvious: We’re going to tip over!
Not knowing what else to do, she had no choice but to release the jib. She plucked at every knot in reach and soon the jib was fluttering like a giant flag. She thought the boat would come crashing down, instead it settled gently back into the water and swung south again. “South is better than flipping over,” she said, trying to reassure herself. For someone who could barely steer and who couldn’t tack at all, it really wasn’t very reassuring at all. South took her further from home and deeper into the maze of islands and canals.
What little reassurance she had managed to scrape together was promptly extinguished when she saw the light on the water again. It was the other Corsair boat, and this time it was straight in front of her and heading north! The sight of it bearing down on her set off a new panic and with shaking hands, she hauled in the flapping jib and tied it to a thick rope that ran from the front of the boat to the top of mast. Then she ran to the wheel before remembering the dang thing was already as far to the left as it would go. She needed to go even further left and had no clue how.
Her panic crested higher than ever and, involuntarily, she slunk down behind the wheel, hiding like the child she was.
Just then, the Corsair ship began to take on its own lean. Its port edge was so high in the air that she could see half its hull. A little further and it would be in danger of tipping over, and yet, there was no panic on board. Men climbed out on the high side to help balance the boat as it tacked in closer to shore.
Emily held her breath and prayed for it to go away and leave her alone.
This time her prayers were answered. The men on the high edge of the boat had their backs to the Dead Fish, and the boat’s spotlight was trained away, splaying back and forth up into the hills and forests. The beam of light centered on any movement and it picked out dozens of zombies, which came charging out into the water where they wallowed uselessly.
In a dead silence, the two ships slipped past each other with eight yards of empty water between them. There were no shouts or hails. No one yelled to “Come about!” The night was silent, save for the ever present and growing moans of the dead. Emily hid behind the wheel, sitting motionless, except for her head, which cranked further and further around until the Corsair boat was past her.
Only when it was a hundred yards away and getting further away with every second did she finally sit back. A shiver wracked her, which at first she chalked up to the close call until it dawned on her that she was freezing. She almost scurried down into the hold for a blanket or a towel before she realized that Gunner had to be twice as cold. If he was even still alive.
He was; his eyes cracked as she knelt down next to him. He tried to talk, but his whisper was so light that the words lost their form before they left his mouth.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “Don’t say anything. I’ll get you fixed up and warm.” She had no idea how she was going to manage either, although she knew enough to get him out of the night air, which was becoming chill and damp. Untying his hand, she asked him to push with his leg as she dragged him to the stairs leading down into the galley. He weighed a ton and his attempts at helping were constrained to little more than a few ineffectual kicks. Then she got to the stairs. There were only seven steps. They would be seven head-banging steps that might kill him.
“I’ll get a pillow,” she told him. Do Corsairs even use pillows? she wondered, heading down into the darkness, where she pegged the irony meter by tripping over the lantern. Righting both herself and it, she lit it and found herself pleasantly surprised at the state of the ship. The only other Corsair boat she’d been in had been a trashed-out mess and she had assumed they’d all be like that. Corsairs were villains, after all.
The Dead Fish was as clean as her room back home on Bainbridge and far more orderly. A cabin was just behind the stairs, and there she discovered that Corsairs did indeed use pillows. She came up on deck, stuck the pillow beneath Gunner’s head and began pulling. With gravity assisting her, she got him down the stairs in a flash, and because the teak flooring was clean and uncluttered, she slid him right to the first cabin.
There was no getting him on the bed. She’d need a winch to get his bulk off the ground.
He had begun to shiver as well. “That’s normal,” she told him. “It means your body is doing the right thing. The, uh, normal thing. We’ll just get you dried off and warm.” Had he been anyone else, she would have cut away his clothing, toweled him off and wrapped him in blankets until he resembled a human burrito. As he was something of a horror with his clothes on, Gunner was the last person she wanted to see naked.
Even though he looked about as unconscious as a person could get and still be alive, she told him, “I won’t look, I promise. It wouldn’t be ladylike.” With that excuse firmly set, she ran to the galley for scissors and then to the tiny bathroom for towels. Laying the towels over him, she cut away everything but his underwear—she had to draw the line somewhere. Next, she toweled him off and wrapped him. Still he shivered.
What she needed was a fire, and in the galley she found something that looked like a witch’s cauldron. Within the wide, black metal basin she found the evidence of past fires. Nearby was a spilled box of kindling. She had a small fire going in a minute and watched, complacent and warm, as the smoke went up through an odd funnel drilled into the ceiling.
The heat was wonderful and she luxuriated in it for a while before a moan reminded her of her duties. The first of which was to haul Gunner back out into the galley so he could be closer to the fire. Once that was done, she went up on deck to check their position. Before she could, she saw Gavin.
“Dang it! Gavin, I’m sorry.”
“You said you’d help me,” he accused in a whisper.
“And I’m going…” He interrupted her by vomiting up a quart of blood that was so black it could’ve been tar. In defeat, she sighed, tiredly. “Okay, let’s get you downstairs.” Because he was awake, wincing and whining, it took twice as long to get him down into the galley. She slid him to the far side of the cauldron from Gunner and then went about repeating the same set of nursing actions: strip, dry, bundle.
“Now fix me,” he ordered in his croaking voice. “You were the one who shot me, in case you forgot.”
“In self-defense, in case you forgot. That puts you at the bottom of the list. And anyways, I have to get out of these wet clothes.” Everyone was dry, except for her. Once more, she was pleasantly surprised with what she found in the way of clean clothes. The captain had been a stickler in this regard as well, and there were plenty of clean options open to her. Nothing fit her, of course. That was a given in a man’s boat, and since it was a Corsair boat, her color choices ran the diverse gamut from black to darker black.
Still, she was dry and getting warm. She turned her attention to her two patients and poured into them all the medical experience she had managed to soak up during her classes with Jillybean. This did not amount to much in regard to either man: she checked their vital signs, put them in shock position with their feet elevated, kept them warm, and that was about it.
Both of them needed surgery. She didn’t have real tools for it, sterile bandages or even a single piece of IV equipment to get fluids into them properly. And even if she had an entire operating room at her disposal, any form of surgery that required anything more than stitching up the simplest cut was beyond her.
Feeling like a fraud, she told them, “You need to rest now. And I have to make sure we’re not going to run into anything.” She had no idea how long she had been below deck, though it had to have been a considerable length of time. When she came up on deck, the darkness had given way to a
hazy gray light that filtered through a dense fog.
Gray was the only color visible. From where she stood at the top of the companionway, she couldn’t even see the mast, let alone the bow which, for all she knew, was heading right for more rocks, a gang of zombies, or a fleet of Corsairs. Or all three.
Like a blind girl, she edged clumsily forward with her hands out until she found the mast. There, she worked at the tangle of knots with desperate hands until she had the sail free once again. It billowed and swept back the fog for all of a moment, then the gray came creeping in again. In those few seconds, the boat had doubled its speed. Quickly, she hauled the sail down and tied it off. This should have stopped the boat, but when she looked over the rail, she saw that the Dead Fish was still drifting.
Even she knew that drifting blindly was a bad thing. But how could she stop a boat that didn’t have brakes?
“The anchor!” she cried in triumph. Feeling her way to the bow, she released the anchor without realizing that during the gunfight earlier, Billy had accidentally shot the anchor rope. The anchor splashed into the water and sank, going straight down for two hundred feet until it buried itself in the ooze at the bottom of the Sound. “Oh jeeze,” Emily whispered, as the boat swept on at the mercy of wind and tide.
Chapter 4
Hoquiam, The Lair of the Corsairs
Commotion. A thousand faces. A body splayed out in a sea of blood. Cruel, searing pain, and intense lingering cold. Stripped bare and shaved bald. Then darkness so vast and endless that Jillybean didn’t think she would ever find her way out again.
She didn’t find her way out so much as she was hawked up and spat out onto the concrete slab that made up the prison floor.
Not so rough! Ipes was suddenly there, sitting in the dust with his three-inch legs jutting out from his navy-blue shorts. He squinted over the top of his bulbous nose at Jillybean. Hey, you okay? How are you holding up? Can you see me?
She’s fine, Eve snapped. Unlike Jillybean, Eve still had gobs of hair—chestnut brown and poking out in every direction. She was also clothes: dressed in black from her knee-high leather boots to a deep velour half-cape that hung from her squared shoulders. In fact, she’s better than fine. Aren’t you, Jillybean? I think you might finally be angry enough to do some real damage.
“Damage? Wh-what kind of damage?” The images were beginning to come together to form a hazy memory. She knew where she was: Hoquiam, the lair of the Corsairs.
Ipes waved his flappy hooves. Don’t listen to her. We’re in no position to do anything of the sort. Eve cocked an imperious eyebrow, making Ipes fidget. There is something you could do, however, the zebra said. We’re sort of in a pickle and I think it would be beneficial for all of us if you could extricate us from our current predicament.
Jillybean gazed at him glass-eyed. “You want me to escape…again? It seems that’s all I ever do, and where does it get me? No where.”
That’s not all true. This from Sadie, who suddenly appeared from a shadow. Like Eve, she was dressed in black, however, her outfit was styled in teen-goth: black jeans with holes in the knees, a black t-shirt with writing obscured by a battered leather jacket, and high-top Converse All-stars, the toes of which had once been white but were now doodled over and dirty grey. The last time you escaped, you ended up saving Emily. And I can’t remember how many times you escaped to save me.
“You can’t remember because you’re dead. And you were never alive, Ipes. And I’m pretty sure I killed you, Eve. Well, Neil did when he threw you into that fire. And where’s Ernie?” She finally glanced around and saw that she was still in the same cage she’d been in earlier that night. Just outside of the cage on the concrete floor, almost within reach, was a brown stain. She stared at it, feeling a sharp pain spread through her chest.
The brown stain called to her, and she went to touch it, only to be brought up short by her golden collar. She looked back, the movement making her new chains rattle. The chains flashed silver—Only the best for a Queen, she heard echo in her head. It had been the Black Captain’s voice, replete with cold, biting laughter.
Each of the three chains were looped around fat, grey dumbbells that were stamped with the number 45. The chains were thick and marvelously shiny except where they looped tightly around the middle of the weights; the silver there marred by dark iron welds. She fingered the loops of silver chain beneath her chin and felt the same sort of welds.
Ernie has been kicked out of the group, Eve said. He was…
Jillybean could feel her inside her head, rooting around, trying to find the right word. “Superfluous?” Jillybean suggested.
Exactly. Why have him around, bringing up bad memories, when we have me? I’ve always been the dominant, strong one. Sadie is the useless compassionate one. Jillybean, you supply the brains. And Ipes, she curled a lip at the toy zebra. Ipes, you’re just a pussy, and when I figure out how to get rid of you…
“Oh stop,” Jillybean said without any force. She didn’t want to hear any more of Eve’s yapping.
That’s too bad, because you’re going to get an earful. I’m in charge now. You folded up and went bye-bye, and now I run things, so unless you want to go back into the dark, you better figure out a way to get us out of this damn cage.
“How?” Everything had been taken from the cell, including the pillow, mattress and blanket. The cage was molded steel that had been bolted straight into the slab of cement. “Do you see anything I can use to pick a lock?”
We thought you’d be able to use, I don’t know, physics or science or something like that.
“It’s physics that’s keeping me in this cell, or perhaps, more accurately, it’s metallurgy.” She knocked one of the bars and sighed. She was about to go on, explaining about the properties of steel, only her eyes fell on the brown stain again, and she pictured Stu Currans lying right there, his hand held out to her. He had come back for her and he had died for her.
“I’m not worth it,” she said under her breath.
Yes, you are! Sadie hurried over and knelt in front of her. I died for you because I loved you. Without you, where would the people of Bainbridge be? And all those people in Estes? And the slaves of the River King? And the people of Sacramento…
“Are either dead or about to be enslaved. They can’t stand up to the Corsairs. The same is true of the Islanders, the Hill People and the Santas. And what about the Guardians? I destroyed their home. I destroyed it for nothing. No, no, I’m not worth dying for. You made a mistake, Sadie. Luckily, I can fix it.”
The chains and weights would make hanging herself from the ceiling bars difficult, but there was an easier way. The cell door had a thick lock plate, three feet off the ground. If she wound one of the chains around it and then around her neck, then wrapped the other two weights around her midsection, she would only have to sit to have her larynx crushed and her circulation cut off. She’d be dead in…
NO! Eve flew across the cell, her feet skimming the cold cement without touching. Jillybean felt a jolt of horrible cold the moment Eve entered her body and took over her mind. Along with the cold came a sinister darkness that was very much like the black, icy water of Puget Sound. It was deeper than most people realized. A body could sink for some time before settling softly among the spires and tendrils of seaweed, deep down in the green muck.
In Jillybean’s mind, the darkness went on forever, and she sank and sank, losing sight of the world above. She had no thoughts while she was beneath the surface. There were no memories. There were no ideas. There weren’t even emotions. Sometimes there’d be a flash of a picture: a handsy guard, a bucket that stank of urine and excrement, a hose turned on her, leering, jeering crowds filled with so many faces that none of them possessed real features. They were blurred outlines bordered by hair.
These seemed to come at great intervals as if weeks or months passed between each, all except the faces. These were still with her when she found herself on her bare knees, staring down at cracked asph
alt. A faint white line to her left told her she was on a street. To her right was a frantic stuffed zebra.
Get up! Sadie, please hurry.
“I’m not…Sadie.” She was out of breath and there was fresh pain across her back. She had no idea where she was or how she got out of her cell, but knew the searing, familiar pain. She was being whipped.
Jillybean! You can do this. Take a deep breath and get up, but hurry. Hurry!
She was not fast enough, and before she could get one shaking leg under her, the whip fell with an amazingly loud crack! The fierce pain spread across her back like a terrible echo. It made her suck in her breath, but she refused to cry out.
Jillybean, Ipes warbled, the fear making his voice go high. She knew the whip was being drawn back a second time. Beneath the laughter and the cheers of the crowd, she could hear the whip slither away like a leather snake. Before it could be drawn all the way back, she thrust upward, thinking that she would stand tall and glare defiance. Instead, she was brought up short by the golden collar. The chains attached to the weights were six inches too short and she could only stand in something of a cringing stoop.
Good! Ipes cried. He rushed around to stand in front of her, beckoning her forward with one of his hooves. Just start walking. Concentrate on me. Don’t think about any of them.
Them? Jillybean gazed blearily around and saw that she was somewhere in the middle of a town that was glutted with trash and human excrement. The morning air smelled like the soggy brown pit beneath an outhouse. It was Hoquiam, and as bad as it was, the people that lived there were worse. Their insides were more terrible and disgusting than their filthy hides.
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 4
