“The games!” someone shouted, leading to an eruption of cheers that carried on and on. A sigh escaped Jillybean. Ever since the River King had initiated fights to the death in his arena, every little tinpot dictator had their gladiator-style games. She hated the spectacle—not the intense combat which seemed to her perfectly natural—no, what she hated was the display of inhumanity on the part of the spectators. They were absolutely bloodthirsty.
Beneath the noise of the excited crowd, the Captain cast her a side-long look. Now would come his petty revenge, she thought. “I know what you are doing,” he told her. “But it won’t work.”
“And what am I doing?”
“You’re trying to get me to kill you. Wasn’t this exactly what your demonstration of ‘superior’ intelligence was about? You wanted to get me so angry I’d fly off the handle. At the same time, you were demonstrating that you could still call on your mental powers any time you wanted. You want me to think that you’re still dangerous, and that just maybe I should kill you quickly before you do something.”
Deep inside a part of her flooded with disappointment. Because of Eve, it hadn’t been an active thought, but the idea had been there. She was surprised that he had perceived her hidden desire for death and now, as her face fell, he sat on the armrest of her throne at his ease.
“It’s a common desire around here. Does that surprise you? That you are more common than you like to think? That you really aren’t special in any way?” She shook her head, again nearly losing the crown. It shifted on her bald head and would’ve fallen if the Captain hadn’t held it there, grinding it down. “No, not special at all.”
He stood and held up his palms until the room quieted. “The games are a great idea and it was exactly what I was thinking, however we just don’t have the time. Bainbridge has declared war on us and…” There was a great roar of hypocritical outrage from the crowd. The Captain’s hands went up again. “I know, I know. How dare they, right? It’s a veritable stab in the back.”
Using the most vulgar terms imaginable, the crowd agreed that it was indeed uncivil.
“Yes, it’s terrible and we should be shaking in our shoes.” Braying laughter burst out at this. “And we still have our friends on Alcatraz to deal with. So, time is pressing. I think the best way to deal with them is to boil them alive.” The crowd oohed, while at the same time the prisoners moaned. Some became so weak that they collapsed and had to be beaten to their feet.
“Did you say something, your Highness?”
Jillybean had moaned along with the crowd. If done correctly, being boiled alive was a slow, agonizing death; she knew she’d be forced to watch each and every one. She shook her head.
“I swear I heard something.” He nodded to Dean Bridge, a small, whey-faced man who was the Captain’s head of security. Dean chose three others and left at a run to prepare for the executions. When he was gone and as the room ran with excited conversations, the Captain glanced at Jillybean. “Are you ready to play another game?” He paused for an answer without expecting one. “It’s a simple question and answer game. If you answer correctly, I’ll move one of those guys,” he pointed at the group of condemned men, “over to the other group. But if you don’t answer correctly, I’ll add more to the executioner’s tab.”
She knew this wasn’t an optional game and she nodded without looking up.
“Very good. The first question is simplicity itself. What is Operation Otter Pop?”
This came from so far out of the blue that Jillybean jumped in her chair—there was no sense denying that she knew what the Captain was talking about. But how did he know? Only three people knew that code name, none of whom would let it slip by accident. Knowing who had talked and why would go a long way to determining how she would answer. She tried the direct approach. “How did you hear about that?”
A cryptic smile played on his full, dark lips. “I have my sources. Too bad you answered my question with a question.” He called out to have “Mondo” moved to the “Soup line.” This was greeted by laughter and a large, beefy man was bustled over even as a huge metal vat, the size of a jacuzzi, was brought in. It was blackened along the sides and bottom, while the interior was dull gray save for a sickening ring comprised of caked-on vomit, matted hair and parboiled flesh.
The sight of it hurt Jillybean’s heart.
“I’ll ask you again, your Highness. What is Operation Otter Pop?”
Chapter 7
McCleary, Washington
Neil Martin walked in something of a fog, one that was both literal and figurative. Both were exceedingly dangerous. They were twenty miles east of Hoquiam in the hills overlooking the town of McCleary, Washington. Well, they would be overlooking the town if it wasn’t for the fog, which was so thick that the rising sun was helpless against it.
In places the fog was a solid grey wall, and he and Zophie Williams had to hold onto Troy’s spear to keep from being separated. In other places it was a solid grey ceiling, hanging just above their heads.
Neil hardly noticed the fog, one way or the other. His mind kept disengaging from reality. Not that he was going about as though he were tripping on acid. No, it was more like he was sleepwalking. He saw the fog and waded through icy streams and was pulled down behind a tree because they had almost run into a gang of zombies, but none of that really registered. Nor did it stick in his long-term memory. To him, it seemed as though their escape from the Corsairs’ lair and their long arduous trek had taken somewhere between four years and forty minutes.
“We gotta stop, please,” Zophie Williams begged. She didn’t wait for an answer or for permission. She reeled to her left and plopped down on a fallen tree and groaned. “My feet are friggin’ killing me.” Neil gazed blandly at the top of her dirty blonde head as she untied one of her Nikes and pulled it off. “Oooh yeah,” she said, with such obvious pleasure that it made Troy Holt distinctly uncomfortable.
The eighteen-year-old Guardian turned his handsome, chiseled face slightly away, saying, “We just had a break, Miss Williams. Could you please put your shoe back on?”
Instead, she took the second one off, moaning, “Oh God, yes.” This seemed to wake Neil from his fugue. He cocked an eyebrow and smirked at Troy in a knowing manner.
In truth, with his scarred flesh, his gray face, the spray of old black blood freckles across his nose and the pin going through his forehead, the smirk, knowing or not, was lost on Troy.
Even if Neil had retained his boyish good looks, the smirk would not have been appreciated. Troy was not just a Guardian, he was a Knights Sergeant and held himself above sexual humor, seeing it as both crude and debasing. What was worse than that was the breaking of the Second Commandment: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. She’d been doing it all night, despite his admonishments or his patient explanations.
His patience was wearing dangerously thin. “We’ll get another break when we get to the Sound, but that’s only if we hurry. This fog won’t last forever.” He liked to think that the fog had been heaven sent and, as with all miracles, it was not to be taken for granted. The Lord God not only worked in mysterious ways, He could be fickle and capricious, especially at the first sign of someone being disgruntled.
If they were lucky as well as good, keeping the blasphemy to a minimum, Troy knew in his heart that the fog would stay with them until they made it to Bainbridge.
“The fog sucks,” Zophie remarked, holding up one of her shoes and curling a lip at it. The athletic shoe, which had started the night as white, was currently mud-colored and squished out yellowed water when she bent it. “I almost poked my God-damn…” Troy stiffened and she sighed. “Sorry. Sorry. I almost poked my eye out just now.”
Impatiently, he stamped the butt of his spear into the damp ground and explained, “The fog does not ‘suck.’ It’s a gift that we shouldn’t squander. It hides us from our enemies. If they can’t see us, then they can’t get us. Do you understand?”
“I gue
ss so,” she said, and then demonstrated her complete lack of understanding by peeling away one of her socks.
“You guess so?” Troy turned to Neil and was about appeal to him to see if he could talk some sense into her, but he was staring at the woman’s small foot with what Troy took to be a look of hunger. Sudden anger flared in Troy and he raised the spear to really slam it down—Maybe they don’t realize the danger they are in. This thought dispelled the tantrum he had been about to throw.
The Corsairs were closing in. Troy had first heard them near three in the morning, calling to each other or crashing through the woods, getting closer and closer. It had all seemed very clear to him, but had it been clear to the others? By then Neil had been as mindless as a zombie, plodding ever forward without tiring. Zophie was just the opposite. She had been stumbling and complaining. At the beginning of the march she’d had a pack, which she had let fall somewhere without telling anyone. She’d also had an M4. She had demanded the gun and then not an hour later wanted to toss it aside. Exhaustion had turned her into almost as much of a zombie as Neil.
“The Corsairs are very close,” he explained, dropping to one knee and taking the sock from her hand. He gave it a quick snap against his thigh and put it back on her foot. “It’s hard to say how close they are, now that we left the road, but we can’t take any chances. You know what’ll happen if they catch you, right?”
Zophie gave him a frightened nod, while Neil looked calmly on, without any fear at all. Troy envied that. He was doing everything he could, and had been for days now, not to let his fear show through. He trusted completely in the Lord, but his body was still mortal and it betrayed him from time to time. His hands shook and his insides trembled at the thought of getting caught. The Black Captain would make a special case out of him; he would try to break him just like he had tried to break the Queen.
“I don’t think they can track us in this fog,” Neil said, patting Zophie’s knee as if he wasn’t a hideous monster and as if she wasn’t looking at him in disgust. “It should be okay.”
“See?” Zophie said to Troy, snatching off her sock again and wiggling her toes. “They’ll never find us in this pea soup. We should take advantage of it and chill for a few minutes while we can.”
Troy looked up into the fog and saw only gray. Even though the fog was a blessing, it also made him feel isolated, separated from his God, alone with what were, in essence a prostitute and a demon. He wasn’t used to this sort of company and it made him feel both superior and cranky that they wouldn’t automatically acquiesce to his higher authority.
“They may not be tracking us now, but our destination is fairly obvious, don’t you think? They have to know that we’re trying to get to Puget Sound, and if they get there before us, and there’s no fog to hide us,” he paused to shrug. With his armored vest, the movement was slight. “We’ll have to find the boat in broad daylight.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Neil said. “There’s trees and buildings and stuff like that. It’s not like we’ll be right out in the open.”
Troy closed his eyes briefly. “And when we get out onto the water? What about then? You said yourself that we’ll be on the water for a few hours before we get to Bainbridge. We’ll be sitting ducks.”
“I guess you’re right,” Neil allowed, still completely unruffled. “Maybe we should get moving.”
Zophie stared at him down the length of her crooked nose. “Maybe?” she hissed, forcing the sock onto her foot. “Maybe nothing. Jesus H. Christ! How are we going to be out on the water for hours? You said that Seattle was like two miles away. I could swim that faster than a few hours.”
“Seattle is that close to a portion of the Sound,” Neil explained, “but the boat’s in Olympia and that’s not close at all. It’s like forty miles.”
“Forty miles!” Zophie cried. She had been with the Corsairs for so long she had forgotten the basic rules of surviving in the wild, the first of which was to be quiet. A zombie heard her and let out a long moan and started trudging in their direction. Tree branches snapped and the ground seemed to tremble; to Zophie, it sounded like an elephant was coming. With or without shoes, she wanted to take off running.
Troy placed a hand on her shoulder and held her down. With his other hand, he hefted his spear. “Wait,” he told her. “It might not even see us.” The three crouched down with the fog a few feet above their heads. The fog was maybe six feet off the ground, but as the beast came closer, a stray wind briefly lifted the veil and they saw that it was not one zombie, but three.
Now Zophie froze in terror. She couldn’t run and she desperately wanted to. She tried, but all she could manage was a series of spasms that did nothing but rattle a branch and draw the zombies’ attention right at them. The same breeze swept an even denser fog across the hilltop just as the three beasts charged. Running in a straight line wasn’t easy for a zombie, even when it could see the target of its hate and hunger. In the fog, direction became a hypothetical concept. The middle zombie was missing its right foot and tended to list quickly in the direction of its stump. It banged squarely into the fellow on its right and the two barged off, barreling past the little group by ten feet, and then kept going to wander uselessly in the fog.
The third zombie took the wrong course as well, canting off at an angle only to run face-first into a tree and rebound directly for the trio. It thundered along, a hideous beast, nine feet in height and many hundreds of pounds in weight, its mind consumed with hatred and its head in a literal fog. Neil stood and was ready to fight, except he had forgotten that he had propped his M4 against the downed stump. He squinted around, saw the gun and went to grab it just as Troy lifted his spear to take the charge of the zombie in the throat.
Neil accidentally knocked the spear aside just as the beast came storming up. With its head in the lowest edge of the swirling fog, it didn’t see Troy until it plowed right over the man. Troy’s chest would have been dented in a good seven inches if it hadn’t been for his armor. Even with it, he was sent flying back, his breath knocked right out of him, too stunned to right himself before the zombie got to its feet.
It charged the prostrate Guardian, and Troy knew his armor wasn’t going to save him this time. The zombie, naked, huge, scabbed and covered with running sores, stood glaring down for a second too long. Before it could reach down, rip open his armor and pull out Troy’s intestines, very much like it was eating from a can of SpaghettiOs, Neil was on it, fighting like mad, looking tiny against the giant. He had a hunting knife in one hand, which he used to stab the creature over and over again, aiming for its neck, its heart, its liver.
The zombie didn’t feel the dagger, but it knew something was on it. With a hand that was half Neil’s size, it grabbed Neil and tossed him away. Neil hit a tree, his back bending like a U. He was up again after barely a pause and once more he attacked with single-minded aggression, like a wolverine going against a grizzly bear.
The beast was slow-witted and took huge heavy-handed swipes that Neil saw coming a mile off. He ducked beneath the first and then dashed in to stab both of the thing’s kidneys. He then danced around to his left in a tight circle, avoiding a swishing backhand as the zombie turned.
Troy wanted to tell him to go for the back of the knees, only his lungs were still paralyzed from the shock of the impact and he was unable to draw a breath. Neil might have been beyond the point of understanding English, anyway. His actions were in no way consistent with his character or common sense. Having already discovered a winning strategy, he threw it away by leaping on the monster’s broad back. Now he plunged the dagger deep into the zombie’s throat and began sawing back and forth.
Sawing the head off a zombie while it was still standing is the single greatest blunder a person could make. Neil was flung again, this time he disappeared into the mists with the zombie went charging after.
In seconds, there were great crashes, screams and fierce growls. Troy staggered to his feet, managed a wheezing, asthmatic
breath, caught up his spear and lurched after. He followed a trail of black blood and broken trees that curved away down the hill. There he found Neil calmly pissing onto the back of the dead zombie. The creature had been struck in so many vital spots that it had bled out, something that was a rarity in the annals of zombie fighting. Neil didn’t look any better than his dead opponent. It appeared as if he had just stepped out of a blender.
“What?” Neil asked as he buttoned up the shredded remains of his pants. “I had to go.”
It wasn’t the urination that had Troy staring. Neil’s scalp had come unpinned again and a great bloody flap hung over one ear.
“Your hair is…” Troy waved a hand next to his own head in imitation.
Neil gave his head a jerk and the flap slapped back into place. After he zipped up, he checked the flap. “Awe man! The safety pin’s gone.” His face took on even more of a curdled look than usual, which Troy assumed meant that Neil was “feeling” something, an emotion, maybe. It was hard to tell.
“We’ll find a new pin,” Troy assured him. “Or some thread and a needle. Come on. I don’t want to leave Zophie alone for too long.” They trudged back up the hill and Troy found Zophie’s sneakers, but not Zophie.
It took Neil half a minute of staring at the log and the sneakers before he blurted out, “Hey, where’s the girl? She was right here.” He took a long breath, and Troy was sure he was going to yell her name.
“Don’t!” Troy hissed. “There were two other zombies, remember? And look.” He pointed at the ground where small prints could be seen tracking through the dew-covered grass. “She should be easy to find.” Neil grinned at him, something Troy wished he wouldn’t do. He turned away and saw other tracks that were even more obvious.
The first set belonged to the zombies. The second set of three were their own and even as it occurred to Troy how easily they could be followed, he heard a whispered voice come from out of the fog: “Tell Lamar to bring his men up. I think we might be getting close.”
Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Page 8
