Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained

by Meredith, Peter

  “My deal? My deal is my own,” Neil said, haughtily as if he were talking to a cheeky fourth-grader. Despite the fact that he was clueless as to what the man was talking about, he felt the rejoinder was particularly clever, especially as it made the Corsair frown in confusion. “Like I told your friend, I’m Neil Martin and this is Troy. And you are Corsairs and this is a Corsair boat.” With his zombie brain going off half-cocked at times, he liked things to be as concrete as possible and now that he had a firm handle on the situation, he could address it properly. Turning to Troy, he asked, “Do we kill them or take them prisoner? What’s the proper way to go about this?”

  The question should have been asked by one of the Corsairs; Neil still had his rifle on his back and wasn’t in the position to kill or capture anyone. Troy had a bead on Back-hair Bob, which left him vulnerable to the second man, and his position became even more untenable as two more Corsairs appeared on his right, coming up from a hatch in the foredeck. Before they could completely materialize out of the fog, he pivoted his aim at them.

  Without much hope, Troy suggested, “Maybe we should all go our separate ways before someone gets hurt.”

  “Or maybe you drop your gun,” Back-hair Bob said, grunting out a laugh. “We got you surrounded.”

  “Ha!” Neil cried. “That’s what you think. We have an entire company of men with us. Right back there.” He jerked his thumb behind him, hitting his M4 with it, and only just then realizing he wasn’t carrying the gun at all, which seemed to be the height of silliness since a “gun” battle was in the offing. To be sure, he looked down at his empty hands—yep, no gun. It was all the more reason to bluff his way out of their current jam. Raising his voice, he called out, “Captain Williams, if you’ll send some men to flank these miserable Corsairs, I would appreciate it.”

  Neil hoped that Zophie would skip a few rocks into the water or do anything to make some noise. Unfortunately, she was too frightened to move beyond trembling.

  Back-hair Bob listened with an ear cocked. “I don’t hear nobody.”

  “No duh! That’s because they’re Delta Force Seals,” Neil explained. “You hear that?” They all uselessly cocked an ear. Puget Sound was dead quiet. “That nothing you hear is the sound of them surrounding us right now. And you know what? They have M-80 high-octane thermalized vision scopes. Each of you is probably being targeted four times over right as we speak. I wouldn’t even think about sneezing if I were you.”

  “Is that so?” Bob replied. Neil assured him that it was so, prompting Bob to ask, “Then what are they waiting for? Why don’t they shoot?”

  “Why? Because they’re so highly trained, of course. They’re waiting on my command and I’d give it, but…”

  He couldn’t think of an adequate “but” and the seconds drew out. “But why?” Bob demanded.

  “I don’t want to make a mess of the deck. If you guys could come down off the boat, I promise they’ll kill you quickly. Come on.” The four men didn’t stir. “Come on or you’ll force me to do something I don’t want to do.” They still didn’t move. “One,” he said, ominously. “Two!” he warned. Since there were no Delta Force Seals, he drew out saying “three,” then, just as the moment was about to get so embarrassing that even Neil would notice, there came a soft whispering sound to their left.

  The Corsairs spun and aimed their weapons into the fog. A second later the prow of a black boat slid gently into view. They breathed a sigh of relief, all except for Back-hair Bob, who cried out in anger, “Look out, you lubber! Watch the paint. Fend off! Willy, fend them off for Christ sakes!”

  One of the Corsairs leapt to the other side of the deck and heaved over a series of foam fenders; they cushioned the blow as the two boats gently collided. Although his precious paint was untouched, Bob was in a fit. Screaming curses, he went to the rail and jumped across. At first, he thought the boat was abandoned. Then he saw the little creature crouched down on the stairs; he didn’t see the gun in her hands.

  “Who the fu…” He lumbered right at her and for once Emily Grey wasn’t afraid. Her hands were perfectly steady and she fired without flinching. Bob was a large target, and was so close that she couldn’t miss. The bullet took him in the exact center of his barrel chest; strangely, his look was one of surprise rather than pain. Thinking that he was too big for the tiny 5.56mm round, she fired again and again until he fell backwards over the rail and splashed down between the boats.

  The splash set off a firefight that created pulses in the fog and had someone been able to watch from on top of the mast of the Dead Fish, it would have seemed like the fog was breathing in and out.

  Everyone began firing at once and, after the seemingly perpetual silence that hung over the Sound, the noise was horrendous. In spite of the unparalleled din, the sinister sound of the bullets could be heard whispering past each other. Most of the time, those whispers carried off into the fog, but sometimes they ended with meaty thuds as the lead penetrated flesh and bone.

  Neil, who was the only one without a weapon in hand, twisted violently around to get at his rifle. In a way, he looked like a very ugly dog chasing its tail. He turned just as one of the Corsairs fired at him, so that the bullet hit the upper receiver of his M4, bending in the port cover and then winging away. With his footing less than secure to begin with, the shot in the back sent him sprawling face first into the grey water.

  Troy was also hit just as he and a Corsair exchanged rounds. They both went down, each of them looking surprised. After so many years and so many near misses, the Corsair had thought he was invincible. Now his breastbone was cracked like an old, dry stick and his heart was turned inside out. Troy also had his conviction of invincibility shattered. In his case it was not himself that he thought was so tough that it could withstand bullets, but his armor.

  It had always protected him. It had taken baseball bats from bandits, claws from giant zombies and even bullets from Corsairs, all except this last bullet, that is. It lanced through an overlap of two ballistic plates which spread the power of the impact so that instead of feeling as though he’d been struck with a searing hot laser, it was like taking the full force of a mule’s kick in the chest. Before he knew it, he was on his back with a foam of grey water covering over him and pouring down his lungs.

  Now, it was two grown Corsairs against an eleven-year-old girl. Emily had the advantage. With her uncle in trouble and Gunner dying, she was completely without fear for herself. She was also crouched on the stairs with gossamer tendrils of fog rolling over her. One of the Corsairs didn’t know where she was, and the other was firing eight inches over her head.

  A steady hand was a fine thing; what would have been even better, was if she’d had hours of practice with the weapon she carried. She blazed away, spraying bullets across the entire deck of the Harbinger, working the M4 back and forth. To a sturdy man, the recoil was negligible, to Emily it made aiming impossible. The gun, which wasn’t snugged up tight in the pocket of her shoulder as it should have been, bounced all around in her grip as she went through an entire thirty-round magazine before finally killing one of her enemies.

  The other Corsair had finally located her in the fog but as he was simultaneously trying to hide behind the mast and shoot, his bullets kept missing, sometimes by as much as five feet. In the midst of his one-person battle—she was just realizing that she didn’t have a spare magazine—he leapt up and ran for the stairs leading down to the Harbinger’s galley. He dropped down, then popped up a second later to fire three wild shot. Again, he dropped low and a second later, like a deranged, murderous jack-in-the-box, he popped up to shoot. And again, and again, unable to strike a happy balance between saving his own skin and piecing hers.

  Nine bullets zinged past Emily before she saw that Back-hair Bob had dropped a magazine sometime between leaping across to the Dead Fish and falling off of it. Darting up from the stairs, she snatched it and ran back to reload her gun. It should have been a simple process; however, her hands fel
t like they were made out of wood as she went through the unpracticed steps.

  Time dragged out, marked only by the bullets missing her.

  The new magazine, which looked exactly like the old magazine, seemed to be a fraction of an inch too large. It kept getting hung up; sometimes the front seemed too big and sometimes it was the back. Frustrated, she wiggled it back and forth and then, like magic, it slid easily into place. Without a thought, she hopped up to shoot at exactly the same moment that her enemy did as well, and what was truly amazing, they were both actually aiming this time. And, in the realm of unreal coincidence, they pulled their triggers as if their fingers had synchronized. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Two guns, both with their bolts back—he was out of ammo, while she had forgotten to hit the bolt release.

  As if they were mirror images of the other, they both turned their guns to the side and saw the problem. He cursed while she only stared, thinking that her gun was broken. The gaping stare lasted only a moment before she remembered the final step in the reloading process. She slapped the bolt release and went to aim again, only as she brought the gun up, she saw the ass end of a bullet sticking out of the port.

  Her gun had jammed!

  She whined in her throat as she yanked back on the charging handle, sending the lodged bullet flying. Releasing the handle was supposed to chamber a new round, only this one had miss-fed as well. Another yank and another stove-piped round. When she looked up, she saw the Corsair as he let his bolt sink home. He didn’t hesitate to take the kill shot, and brought his weapon up, but strangely seemed to fire even before the gun was pointed—and then he pitched forward, a startled look on his face and a bloom of red spreading across his chest.

  Neil Martin had finally got the gun off his back. While Emily fought a battle within a battle, one to decide who was the most inept, Neil had been in an epic struggle of his own, fighting against the strap of his rifle. He spun and twisted and grappled with the strap as if he were contending against a boa constrictor of unusual tenacity. When he prevailed against the strap, he turned the gun about, took careful aim at the back of the Corsair, slipped on a rock and accidentally drilled the man precisely between the shoulder blades.

  “Ha! How’s that for shooting straight, Troy? Troy?” He glanced over to see Troy Holt drowning in three feet of water. “Oh boy. Get on up here, Troy. Can you breathe? You look sort of purplish.” Troy’s lungs hadn’t just filled with water, they had also seized up. Neil knew what he had to do. He had to do CPA. “Or is it CPU?” His zombie mind wanted to fixate on the initials, but he knew they weren’t important. What was important was giving Troy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, only he didn’t think it would be right for him to do it on account of his germs.

  Luckily, there was someone who could help him: the girl on the boat. He had heard her whining and figured she was a slave. “Excuse me! You-who? Young lady? Are you okay? My friend here needs a little help. He needs a little C.A.T. No, that’s not it. It’s the one with mouth-to-mouth. I’d do it but I have, uh, I have a cold sore.” There’s no sense scaring her off with the truth, he thought. And maybe she won’t even notice my little problem.

  He was about to add to the lie, when the girl stood up. “Deanna?” He blinked, sure that his eyes were playing tricks on him.

  “No, Uncle Neil, it’s me Emily. Goodness! What happened to you? You look like…oh boy! Get him out of the water.”

  With his mind going in so many directions, he had let Troy sink back down. “Right. Sorry, Troy.” Neil dragged him back to shore as Emily climbed down into the cold water and waded to the beach.

  “I’ll take care of this,” she said. “You go and make sure there’s no one else on that first boat. Be careful, got it?” She pushed him away and gazed down at Troy Holt. He was so dreadfully pale that his general lack of color had progressed to his lips, which were a very light shade of pink.

  What did that mean? she wondered. Was he drowned? Or half-way drowned?

  Because of his armor, she couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. “ABCs,” she told herself, remembering one of the first lessons that Jillybean had taught her. “Give two rescue breaths.” Clamping his nose shut, she went to over-inflate him just as she had done with Gunner. His lungs were filled with water and the air wouldn’t go in. She immediately rolled him onto his side, and was immediately rewarded by a trickle of water.

  “You’re too up,” she yelled into his face. By that she meant he was at the wrong angle. The water was settled down into his lungs. He had to be turned around so the water would flow out of him. Grabbing his feet, she spun him so that gravity dribbled the water out of him. To assist it, she pumped his legs, though this was simply a spur-of-the-moment idea. It felt silly, so she stopped.

  She tried breathing for him again and this time his lungs filled, though there was a bubbly manner to the way his lungs inflated. She gave him another breath before turning him from one side to another. The next breaths went in easier. “And now for chest compressions,” she announced. There were two problems with the idea; the first being his armor. Frantically, she tore at the velcro until she got the chest piece off of him.

  Here she discovered the second problem: he was already breathing. “Ah, well, okay then.” She chalked it up as a win. There would be no celebrating, however. Troy was bleeding through the t-shirt he wore beneath his armor. The blood spread quickly with each breath…each labored breath was a more accurate description. He was in obvious pain.

  “Oh jeeze,” she whispered, biting her lip.

  She was just starting to feel overwhelmed by everything when she heard someone whimper, not far away in the fog. It sounded like a woman which Emily assumed meant she would be nice. “Hello? Who is it? My name’s Emily. I’m Neil’s niece.” She advanced warily, until she saw a cringing Zophie Williams, still tucked up in her shopping cart. She too was bleeding. It didn’t matter that it was an older wound, she was just one more person who depended on Emily.

  One more person who is going to die, because I don’t know what I’m doing, Emily thought bitterly.

  Only Neil was still on his feet, although how was something of a mystery. She knew all about the zombie virus in him, still he looked like a bag of yesterday’s garbage that the raccoons had gotten into. And his mental state might be worse than his physical one. He wasn’t going to be any help.

  The frightened, childish part of her wondered if it would be too terrible to just leave these new people. She could take Neil with her and escape on the Dead Fish. It was the worst thing she had ever considered doing, and she was more than considering it. Almost on their own, her feet had turned her around and were leading her back to the Sound.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  Chapter 12

  Hoquiam, The Lair of the Corsairs

  When the Black Captain said he wanted rocket-propelled bombs, he meant he wanted them right away, that very day if possible. He also wanted them to replicate the missiles of old in both speed and penetrating power, something that even Jillybean couldn’t handle on such short notice. Threats were made. Little Leah was dragged forward, her new golden collar sparkling in the light of the fire that was still flickering beneath the vat.

  “Hurt her, and you get nothing,” Jillybean stated, setting her chin defiantly. “For the moment, she is a hostage for us both.”

  The Captain’s deep black eyes appraised his bald, abused slave. Someone testing his authority was not something he ever allowed, and he very nearly cast the little girl into the simmering water himself. He held back by the barest of margins; he wanted his rockets too badly.

  That Leah lived to see another day was no real victory for Jillybean and she didn’t fool herself into thinking it was. She bowed her head to her captor. “Thank you. This isn’t a simple thing you ask for. I’m not trying to undermine you, it’s just that I need time. I have to test propellants and weights. And if you want actual penetration of the wall, of a reinforced concrete wall, the total impulse of the rocket m
otor will have to be at least ten times greater than I imagined. No, you’re asking too much on such short notice.”

  “I have it on good authority that you’ve already tested rockets.”

  “Yes, but those were designed to go against your ships, which are flimsy compared to the wall. The equivalent of a stick of dynamite could sink one. What you’re asking for is too much, especially under these time constraints. Which makes me wonder why you need all this so quickly. Is there trouble in paradise?”

  He scoffed at the idea, putting just a little too much nonchalance into the denial. “Just tell me how you would take down a section of the wall.”

  “You are right in one way. For an explosive to do anything more than scratch the surface, it must either penetrate or explode on contact. The difficult questions involve the delivery system and the range. And like I said, I would need time to test my theories. I would need to build prototypes. It would take a minimum of a week before I could begin building…”

  “You have three days,” he told her flatly. “And that’s three days for the finished product. Three days to build me enough rockets to tear down three-hundred yards of wall. Don’t give me that look. I know you can do most of the planning in your head.”

  Now it was Jillybean’s turn to scoff. “You clearly have no idea how complicated this is. Yes, I’ve shot off a few rockets, but this isn’t something you can ratio out. In other words, rocketry is not something you simply extrapolate. You might think that a thirty-pound warhead requires only three times as much thrust as a ten-pound warhead, but you’d be wrong. It’s much more. And if you have too much thrust, then you miss altogether! Which takes us into launch angles, burn times, propellants, ambient temperature, relative humidity, wind factors…”