Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained

by Meredith, Peter

  It all screamed AMATEUR!

  “This is insane,” she said. “Jillybean is a genius and I’m just…I’m just me.” If Jillybean killed someone on her first try, even after practicing, then Emily knew Troy was a goner. “I can’t do this.” Just then she had the overwhelming urge to run up on deck, dive from the boat and start swimming. It didn’t matter in what direction.

  Troy grabbed her wrist. “Do not…be afraid…I have prayed…for you.” As kind as this was it did nothing to stem her building panic. Now she was afraid that if she killed Troy, God would be mad at her, too.

  “Thanks. Thanks, that’s nice. I’ll be right back, okay? Just wait here.”

  Before she could run, Neil came up behind her and placed his small grey hands on her shoulders, holding her in place. “Do your best. It’s all any of us can do.” With her knees going weak, it was nothing for him to push her back down. “Just take things one step at a time. We’ll take little baby bites.” It was an unfortunate choice of words as his stomach growled right behind her head. Seeing the blood was getting him hungry. “What’s the first step? I meant baby steps before.”

  She thought for a moment. “We clean him.” She only had Corsair rotgut for the purpose. Just smelling it made her dizzy, so it was a good guess that it would kill all sorts of germs.

  She knelt back down, and with shaking hands cleaned the wound with the alcohol. When it was dry, she brought up one of the knives. The blade shook like it was attached to a live wire.

  Everyone pretended not to notice.

  “N-Next we expose the bullet track,” she said, addressing the hole. She couldn’t look at Troy no matter how brave he was pretending to be; she didn’t want him to see her fear. Letting out a breath through pursed lips, she cut into his flesh. The knife was fearfully sharp and when she dragged it across him, it seemed that Troy was sucking in the air that Emily blew out.

  Jillybean had always preached that any incision should be fast, clean, even and as deep as needed with the first cut. Now Emily understood firsthand why that was so important. Her incision was too shallow and she was forced to cut again. This time, Troy refused to make any outward sign of discomfort. His body was stiff and he held his breath high up in his throat.

  It was Emily who made a whining sound as she cut. She could feel his pain run along the blade and up into her arm. His blood seemed extra red as it streamed from the cut and collected on the towel she had set against his side.

  “Sorry,” she whispered as she leaned over the cut and dabbed it with one of the towels she had boiled earlier. “I-I’m gonna have to go a little deeper.”

  “Sure.” His voice was even more strained than it had been and his breath came in sharper hitches.

  I’m killing him, she thought. She believed this with all of her heart and, with an equal certainty, she also knew she couldn’t stop. After wiping the tears from her eyes, she enlarged the hole with two more shallow cuts, dabbed it with the towel and then poured sterile water over the wound. The path that the bullet had taken was obvious. Even though it had hit him at right angles, the ballistic plates altered its course so that it had entered his flesh at a very shallow slant, going up along his ribs, nicking two of them. She could see little flecks of bone fragments embedded in the gore. They reminded her of the bits of eggshells that always got into the omelets she made for her mother. For the moment, she ignored them.

  Troy’s suffering was escalating to the point where even he couldn’t hide it. He had begun to sweat and his eyes were crinkled up in his head. The bullet had to come out. She kept cutting. After three dreadful inches, her knife scraped against something metallic, causing Troy to groan.

  “It’s here! It’s right here. It’s not deep at all.” More water and another dab with the towel and she saw a bit of grey. It was buried in the cartilage that connected one of his ribs to his sternum. With a pair of forceps, she could have retrieved the hunk of lead in a flash. She had to settle for picking it out with the safety pin. The oddly rubbery cartilage was something of a mystery to her. Did it heal like other body parts? Would it all come out like a hunk of wax if she wasn’t careful? She had no idea.

  When she was finally able to pry the strange, potato-shaped bullet out of him, he wilted back into the couch, and breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. For several seconds, he simply breathed like a normal person. Then he prayed like a Guardian. It was a rambling whispered prayer. When he was done thanking God, he also thanked Emily, saying, “You have no idea how much better I feel.”

  She grinned, her eyes sparkling through the tears that had been flowing the entire time. “I’m not done. There’s little bits of bone in the wound. It’s probably going to hurt.” But it won’t kill you, she thought.

  Both the patient and the child-surgeon remained almost giddy throughout the rest of the procedure. It wasn’t a long one since she really didn’t know how to go about closing him up beyond simply sewing the edges of his wound together. Fixing chipped and cracked ribs was well beyond her, and although she knew his wound would likely need to be drained, she had nothing in the way of surgical tubing.

  When she was done, Troy was able to sit up. He was pale but strong enough to ask for something to eat.

  “Nothing more than soup for now,” Emily told him. The way her mom talked about broth, she acted like it held secret medicinal and spiritual properties.

  While she made the soup, a primitive concoction made from fish, dried seaweed and very dubious carrots, Neil cleaned up. He spied the used safety pin and held it up with a hideous grin. “Finally!” Dropping everything he hurried to the bathroom and came back seconds later beaming with joy. “What do you think? Huh? You like it?” The safety pin glinted through the flesh of his forehead. He had pinned his scalp back on and had done a poor job of things. It looked as though he was wearing a bad toupee.

  “Go away,” Zophie said in weak whisper.

  This dimmed his smile only slightly. “Don’t be like that. This is good. My hair’s going to stay on and Emily here had her first successful surgery. Things are looking up.”

  Emily froze at the stove. First Surgery? As happy as she was for both Troy and herself, she didn’t think what she had done counted as real surgery. She stole a look at Zophie; the poor woman was holding her belly. Emily had no doubt that if she opened her up, her insides would look like a bowlful of white snake slithering in tomato sauce. And there was a reason she had yet to go back to the Dead Fish to see her father. One way or another, she was sure he was going to die and she was absolutely certain that he would die even faster if she tried to operate on him.

  He had been shot down through his neck and in order to get at the bullet, she would have to crack open his hump like a walnut. That would be the easy part. Even if she managed to find the bullet, she didn’t think she’d be able to put him back together again.

  “She’s not touching me,” Zophie hissed.

  “I don’t blame you,” Emily said without looking up. “Maybe…maybe now that Troy is feeling a little better, we can make it back to Bainbridge and an adult can take a look at you.”

  Neil’s expression turned blank. “Maybe,” he said, unenthusiastically. “In the meantime, Emily and I are going to check on Gun…Captain Grey, I mean.” Emily started to spit out excuses why she couldn’t leave Troy. Neil wasn’t buying it and gathered up her supplies, nearly tossing them into the soup. “I’ll just get another pot and we’ll have this stuff ready in a jiffy.”

  While her tools boiled, they went out on deck. The sun had set hours before and the fog had blown past and was now silently creeping through the western forests.

  “Uncle Neil, I don’t know if I can go over there. What if he’s dead? What…what if he doesn’t want me? Maybe he still wants to be Gunner. Maybe he’ll think I’m…weak.” All her life she had heard about Grey’s legendary toughness and bravery, neither of which she felt she had lived up to during their few days together. All she could remember doing was whining.

  It di
dn’t help that Neil hesitated. “Maybe. I don’t mean the weak part. No, Emily you’re tougher at eleven than I was at thirty. Hell, you’re tougher than I ever was. And I’m sure he wants you. He just might want to stay Gunner. He’s gone through a lot and he had to suffer alone. He’s the one we should worry about. Let’s just play it by ear and see how it goes.”

  She pulled the Dead Fish over and helped Neil across, making sure to stay behind him all the way down into the galley. Gunner was asleep, his breath heavy and labored. The two stood in silence watching him. The blanket he used to cover his face had fallen away and his repulsive nature was on full display.

  “I could make him a new mask,” Neil whispered.

  Emily was more worried about his breathing than his face. There was a gurgling quality to it. She had to drain the blood somehow, but didn’t have a clue besides turning him upside down and letting it pour on out.

  “Hey,” Gunner whispered, making Emily jump.

  “Hey,” she replied. The two stared at each other. As always, he looked at her from top to bottom and where before she saw lewdness, now she saw he was looking at her the way her mom used to—with ninety percent approval. It was never a hundred percent. There was always a hair out of place or a slight slouch or a shirt that would have been a better choice than the one she had on.

  She had complained to Jillybean about it once. “Every parent thinks they created perfection and the world would see it if only junior would act differently, or say this, or wear that, or had better friends. Trust me, if you get ninety percent approval, you’re doing something right.”

  It didn’t feel right just then. It felt like he was looking right through her and seeing her many, many flaws.

  The silence drew until even Neil noticed it, which was long indeed. “Oh, hey, Emily just did her first surgery on, on, that guy.”

  “Troy,” Emily added.

  “Yeah, Troy. And guess what? He lived. Open heart surgery at the age of eleven and she pulls it off without…”

  With her cheeks going red, she stopped him. “It wasn’t open heart surgery. The bullet was just kinda, sorta near his heart. It was nothing. Like a few cuts and it was right there. It was nothing.”

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing,” Gunner said, in rasping whisper. “Sounds like you did a good thing for someone. Your mother would be proud.” He made the mistake of smiling; it wasn’t pretty. Her eyes flickered away and he silently berated himself for being a fool. “I should get some sleep. Neil, you’ll make sure we head to Bainbridge as fast as possible?”

  “Of course.” He pointed west which was the wrong direction. “You know you can count on me.”

  Tenderly, Emily pulled the blanket up around her father’s chin. He tried to lift it to cover most of his face, but she shook her head. “No, this is better. You can breathe easier. And who cares what you look like? I know I don’t. Even if you weren’t…” She had almost blurted out his secret. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “Even if you aren’t the handsomest, I still like you.”

  This time he smiled only with his eyes. It looked like he was about to cry and Emily knew that would embarrass him, so she pretended not to notice and quickly went on deck to where Neil was staring around at the ropes and the tied-up sails.

  “Do you know how to work this thing? I know the sails go up and it makes the boat go, but how do we know what direction we’re going and all that?”

  “Don’t worry, Troy will tell us. The Guardians are fine sailors. That’s what Jillybean always said. He’ll be the captain and we’ll do all the work. You just have to remember which way right and left is. Hey, what’s that? Is that a…it’s a light.” There was golden light flickering off their port bow. It was hard to tell how close it was. Emily only knew that it was getting closer.

  “I’ll do the talking,” Neil told her. “You just keep out of sight.” She crept down the stairs of the galley as the Corsair boat angled their way. It looked like it was going to hit the Harbinger amidships, but it turned neatly and slid along on a reverse parallel course.

  As it approached, the Dead Fish someone called out, “What ship?”

  “What ship is what?” Neil replied. It had seemed like a trick question and he wasn’t about to fall for some dull Corsair’s joke.

  “What the hell is your ship?” someone else on board barked. There were six dark figures on board, each radiated menace.

  That was a difficult question for Neil. He had no idea what the name of the ship was or what it should be. “It’s the uh, the uh, the um, Ti, uh, the Titania.” In that brief window of time, he had been only able to think of three ships: The Good Ship Lollipop, the Titanic and the Lusitania. Titania was the best he could come up with.

  “The what? Hell, that’s the Dead Fish. Isn’t that the one Leney was telling everyone to keep an eye out for?”

  “What do I do?” Neil hissed. The Corsair ship was past them, but had now swept its boom all the way over and was coming around.

  Emily didn’t like their chances with another gun battle. Surviving the last one had been a miracle and she didn’t think God would keep handing them out. She leapt to the starboard side armed the torpedo, flicked on its motor and released it. She had never steered a remote-controlled torpedo, but as she was a kid and these sorts of things seemed to come naturally to kids, she was able to guide the weapon straight into the onrushing boat. They didn’t see it coming.

  The detonation disintegrated the first ten feet of the boat and killed the three men who had been standing at the bow, flinging bits of them high in the air and making it rain blood.

  “Oh jeeze, wow,” Emily whispered, blinking as the fireball lit up the night, showing the sharp black silhouettes of other ships sailing in this crook of the Sound. “Uncle Neil, look!” She pointed at the nearest; however, Neil had frozen in place, staring enraptured by the fire eating up the remains of the boat. Emily grabbed him, shaking him out of his mental daze. “Uncle Neil! Come on. We have to get my dad over to the other boat. The Dead Fish is no longer safe.”

  “There’s no time,” Troy Holt said in a hoarse whisper from the deck of the Harbinger. He had crawled on deck with a gun in his hands as soon as he had heard the Corsairs. “He’s too big to get across with just you two.”

  Emily knew he was right. Gunner was so massive that it would take at least five minutes to haul him up from the galley and bundle him over to the next boat. They would be lucky to have three minutes. “I’m not leaving him,” she declared, fiercely. “Uncle Neil, you go with them. I’ll stay here.” She looked up at the mast with its many attendant ropes and swallowed loudly. “I’ll be fine.”

  Neil began to argue to which Emily responded by shoving him toward the bow which was just then nudging up to the Harbinger. Troy had pulled it close, gasping in pain as he did. “No one’s being left behind,” Troy said. “They’re after one boat, not two. Neil will work this boat at my direction and you will pilot that one. Trust me, I won’t let you crash. We’ll stay close enough for you to hear me. Now, get that main up and Neil light across, hurry.”

  As nutty as the idea was, it was the only chance her father had and after helping Neil over to the Harbinger, she ran up the mainsail in record time. The light wind immediately filled it, pushing the big ship to port. Before she could ask, What do I do? Troy had her ease the helm over, explaining, “The bow is twelve o’clock. Set the boom at three o’clock and the rudder at six.”

  “Cool,” she said as the Dead Fish turned in a sweeping curve back toward the Harbinger. Suddenly sailing seemed easy—for her at least. Neil kept getting confused over which was the bow, the front or the back. And when Troy brought up this or that o’clock, it just made him hungry. Still, clearing the area wasn’t much more difficult than aiming the boat in one direction and letting the wind and the darkness do all the rest.

  The lanterns in both ships were put out and their fires covered by heavy lids. From then on, they were basically invisible. Until the sun came up three hours
later, that is.

  By then they were far up what was called Hood Canal and making good time. Emily had a chart spread in front of her. It was only ten more miles to Tala Point at which time, they’d swing around the last jutting arm of land between them and the main part of the Sound. Then ten more miles and they’d be home.

  She smiled, her face unnaturally tight. Her jaw was stiff from the stress and her usually soft cheeks felt tight from the cold.

  The sunrise, though far from spectacular, was comforting. It was a typical Seattle winter morning: solemn grey clouds that looked like they were right on the edge of dropping a week’s worth of rain. Emily was still gazing at them when something caught her eye: a black sail had suddenly filled off the port side not more than two hundred yards away.

  The boat had been tucked up so closely to the land that Troy had missed it as he plowed ahead in the faster Harbinger. He was a quarter of a mile away and there was no way he could get back in time to help her.

  “Maybe it’s just curious.” It was Gunner. Somehow he had managed to crawl up out of the galley. She had checked on him all throughout the night. Sometimes she just stared at him for long minutes at a time when she should have been minding the wheel. In all that time, he hadn’t budged. But now he had. After so many years of living alone in the wild, he could smell danger. “He probably doesn’t know this is the Dead Fish.”

  “Unless he has binoculars.” She picked hers up and scanned the deck of the ship. “Jeeze!” She found herself staring right at the ship’s captain and he too had binoculars up to his eyes. He had to know he was looking at the Dead Fish. How many Corsair boats had a girl at the wheel?

  Gunner tried to sit up to see over the rail, but lacked the strength. “What is it?” he asked gasping.

  “They see us. God, they know it’s me.” She couldn’t stop staring as the Corsairs on the boat ran about unfurling the jib and drawing in a smaller boat that they were towing behind. “What do we do?”