Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained

by Meredith, Peter

  It felt a little like he had been punched, and he dropped back down holding his cheek.

  As he was blinking the world back into focus, Jeff Battaglia casually asked, “You ever see Butch Cassidy?” His big brown puppy dog eyes looked sadder than ever.

  “Was that a movie? I don’t remember too many. I was really small back then.”

  Jeff had been eleven when the apocalypse started and by then he had seen hundreds of movies, many that his parents didn’t approve of. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was one of the few his dad had watched with him and that had made it special. He could remember every scene and most of the lines. Just then, it was the very end that he could picture with amazing clarity.

  “At the end the two are surrounded like fifty to one, but they’re still making jokes, like it was nothing. I remember wondering how they were going to get away, because they always got away. You know?” Mike humored him with a nod. “But they didn’t get away. They decided to try to fight their way out even though they were surrounded. They rush out and…they stop the movie like right before they get lit up. I always wondered if….if they felt it. You know, getting shot like that. Getting shot like fifty times all at once.”

  The other three with them were staring at Jeff in horror. Two were ex-slaves from Sacramento and the third was a gambler from Santa Rosa with a ridiculous handlebar mustache. For the life of him, Mike couldn’t remember his name.

  Mike saw their fear spike. “I don’t think they felt a thing,” he said. “It would be a quick way to go. Quicker than getting picked apart here. They’re going to flank us any second.” There was too much truth in what he said for anyone to argue and the five of them squatted in silence while little bits of sand rained down on them as bullets chipped away at the berm. Death was coming for them; it was just a matter of how they wanted to die.

  Unlike the others, Mike didn’t really have a choice. He had an audience: Jenn was watching him through her telescope. It meant he couldn’t run away, nor could he let his overpowering fear show on his face. He had to swallow it for her sake. “Don’t be afraid for me,” he whispered, picturing her high cheek bones, red from the cold, and her big blue eyes filling with tears. She was so young that it made him feel, perhaps not old, but older. Old enough to call himself a man.

  Real men knew how to die properly. For his entire life he had watched men die and there was a right way and a wrong way.

  “I’m going to go forward,” he said to the little group. “I’m attacking. Are you with me, Jeff?”

  Jeff had been staring at the dirt an inch from his drooping nose. “Yeah.” This came out as dry as the dirt. “I’ll be Butch Cassidy, going out in a blaze of glory.” He tried to smile through his chattering teeth.

  Mike pretended not to notice, just as he hoped no one saw the sweat in his hair that defied the freezing wind sweeping the Headlands. “And I’ll be the other one. Uh, sun something. What was it? The Sun-flake Kid?”

  “Sundance! It was the Sundance Kid.” He laughed high and crazy before turning to the others. “You guys coming with us?” The two women shook their heads while the Santa didn’t even look up.

  “That’s okay,” Mike said. How they wanted to die was up to them. “This was a volunteer mission and I guess it still is.” He took a huge gulping breath. “You go left; I’ll go right. You three, if you can, get down to the bridge and if you live, tell the Queen…” His throat closed over the words and he was a blink away from crying, something he didn’t want to do. He had no idea what would happen if he let the waterworks go. There was a chance they wouldn’t stop. At seventeen, that was still a possibility.

  Jeff finished for him. “Tell her that Mike loved her and that we died like heroes. Promise us you’ll say that. We were heroes.” He glared until all three made their promises. Once they did he nodded and said to Mike, “On the count of three?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then,” Jeff said and scrambled to the left and, after another gulp of air, Mike went right, crawling over the bloody bodies of the men and women who had followed him up to the barren hump of land. Jeff gave him a thumbs up, checked his weapon and cried out, “One!” He took three seconds to say, “Two!”

  Mike’s body went stiff and he feared that instead of racing forward, firing from the hip, he would end up plodding like a robot and for some unknown reason he thought that there’d be nothing heroic about that. Jeff seemed to be taking forever to finish his count, and in anticipation, Mike eased up so that he could see over the berm. At that moment he saw a strangely shaped black something bouncing toward him—it seemed to be growing as it got closer.

  It took one second too long for him to realize that it was a smoke bomb. “Wait!” he yelled at the very moment Jeff cried: “Three!”

  Too late, Jeff leapt up and was already surging forward before he realized what Mike had said. With bullets hunting him, there was no turning back. He ran with his head cocked to the side, staring at Mike with a look of astonished accusation.

  But there’s a smoke bomb! Mike wanted to scream. It seemed like the weakest justification for cowardice he had ever heard. And would it make a bit of difference to Jeff? No. He was going to die one way or the other. He ran, keeping just ahead of a wave of hot lead, living longer than anyone, including himself, thought he possibly could.

  After four seconds, he remembered his rifle and began firing, somehow missing everything including the wind and sky. His eyes were wide and scared, focused on nothing at all. The world in front of him was a blur. The first bullet to find him dug into his thigh with a meaty thwap! He didn’t notice it. Nor did he feel the bullet that took off a chunk of his tricep. When his kneecap was shattered and he stumbled, he thought he had tripped on a rock.

  His death was painless for him, but not for Mike, who watched in horror as he fell and struggled to stand, sprays of blood and chunks of flesh flying off of him. After eight long seconds, Jeff was finally laid out by a head shot.

  “No!” Mike raged and began firing, killing three men with three shots. Many of the Corsairs had stood to shoot at Jeff. Now half of them flung themselves down and the other half turned to fire. Mike, who was kneeling behind the berm, didn’t duck down this time and expected to be killed in the first volley. “Make it count,” he growled through gritted teeth as he squeezed off more rounds, walking his shots right down the line.

  He had never fired so well in his life, while the Corsairs were missing badly; most of their shots were five feet over his head and very wide. “Morons!” he crowed and laid into them until his ears rang with the thunder of his gun. He almost missed the sharp cry from behind him.

  Finally, he ducked and turned just in time to see the Santa with the big handlebar mustache being riddled by bullets. His body was jitterbugging as if he was having a seizure and maybe he was. A hundred bullets blasting into someone could do that to a person.

  The bullets were still hitting him when he fell across the bloody bodies of the two ex-slaves. They had stuck to the plan and had tried to make their escape, but without Mike running forward with Jeff, too many of the Corsairs had spotted them. Now they were dead and Mike was alone.

  Two miles away, Jenn Lockhart whispered, “Stop shooting. Mike, just give up. They’re almost on you.” A company of Corsairs were crawling along the side of the hill and were coming up practically behind him. Mike wouldn’t stop shooting—she took her eye from the telescope. She had seen enough.

  “Are we winning?” Shaina Hale asked. The stick-like woman was wrapped in a man’s heavy parka and was still shivering, her hands tucked deep into her armpits. “Are the boats afraid of us?”

  It seemed that way. The Corsair fleet was not about to make the mistake of trying to force their way beneath the bridge as they had before. They were going to wait until all resistance had been stamped out before coming up. Then they would divide the bay into manageable chunks and devour the defenders in little pieces.

  “No.” Jenn could only whisper. She lacked th
e strength to speak. It felt as though she were dying, fading into nothing. “They’re not afraid of us.”

  “Oh,” Shaina pouted. “They should be, cuz you’re so great and all.” Shaina thought that only someone really great could be queen. She couldn’t seem to understand that Jenn was just an ordinary girl and that Jillybean might have made a huge mistake in choosing her to rule. “You know there’s a guy in the water.”

  Jenn hadn’t been able to take her eye off of Mike; the entire bay might have been on fire for all she knew. Listlessly, she followed Shaina’s pointing finger and saw that there was a man drowning a hundred yards from the western edge of the island. His head kept slipping beneath the heavy chop as the waves clashed against each other sending up torrents of white foam.

  A boat from the dock was pulling hard for the man. Jenn swung the telescope toward him. “It’s a Guardian. Run and tell whoever’s in the kitchen that we’re going to need some hot soup.” As Shaina skipped away, Jenn resisted the urge to look back at the bridge. The shooting had stopped. Mike was either dead or captured. There was no middle ground.

  She did not follow Shaina down into the prison. Instead, she stood staring directly into the setting sun and cried. The tears came cold and silent. There would be no bawling for Jenn Lockhart, Queen of the Bay. Her misery had to be kept secret and her despair hidden. No one could be allowed to see that she was falling apart.

  “Your Highness?” It was Donna Polston, standing discreetly back, knowing that Jenn would be crying. She waited until Jenn had dabbed her eyes before going on, “The Guardian would like to see you. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. It’s Troy Holt.”

  Jenn spun. “Did he mention anything about Stu or Jillybean?” Donna shook her head, her eyes cast downward. This did not bode well. People tended to spill good news when they could. “I’ll be right down,” she told Donna.

  When she was alone, Jenn couldn’t resist any longer and she squinted back down into the telescope towards the bridge. The first thing she saw were Corsairs swarming all over the last hill. Some were climbing down to the bridge while others were hauling bodies to the edge and tossing them over.

  “God,” she whispered and felt her stomach begin to heave. Before it could, something flew at her, making her jump. It was just a pigeon, grey with a colorful green collar about the lower part of its throat.

  “Here’s your soup,” Shaina said, coming up through the doorway. Her sleeves were wet and there was a steaming carrot in the crook of one arm. “Hey, look. It’s a rock dove.”

  “That? It’s only a…” Jenn paused in midsentence. “Why would you call that a rock dove. It’s a pigeon.”

  As usual, Shaina looked confused. “It’s what my dad called him and he was great, too. He was as smart as anyone. Except for the old Queen. She knew everything there was to know. She even knew stuff that hadn’t even happened yet. Kinda like you. Oh, rats. I forgot the spoon for your soup. Are you okay without one?”

  Jenn was still stuck on the idea of a rock dove. Was it a sign or was it just a bird? Alcatraz was called “The Rock” and the dove was the symbol for peace. Did she dare hope? No. Without Mike, Jenn didn’t think she could ever hope again.

  “The soup is for the Guardian and I suspect he would like a spoon. Here, let me take the bowl while you run and fetch a spoon.” Jenn breathed in the steam of the soup as she carried the bowl down to the infirmary where Troy was still pale and dripping, coughing up bay water every few minutes.

  Although his chest still ached and his lungs felt like a pair of sponges, he dropped to one knee as Jenn stepped in. Curiosity had drawn a crowd which now oohed. No Guardian had ever knelt before their queen.

  “I believe I was wrong,” he said.

  This was unexpected. She set the bowl aside and put out her hand to help him up. He misconstrued the action and kissed the back of her cold hand. This had the crowd whispering, hopefully. Jenn was actually bothered by the feel of his lips on her flesh. The only lips she ever wanted to feel were Mike’s.

  She gave the Guardian a lying smile. “Here, sit. Have some soup. We’ll get you a spoon in a second. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me what you were wrong about.”

  “I was wrong about Queen Jillian and about you.”

  “Me? Somehow I doubt that. Why don’t you explain…ah, here’s your spoon.” He ignored the soup. Time was crunching in again and he rushed out his story, starting when he and Stu left the Queen’s Revenge. If she’d had any hope left, the story would have killed it and then burnt its bones: Stu dead, Jillybean collared and caged, Bainbridge surrounded and their governor threatened by assassins at every turn. And now the Guardian kisses her hand?

  It was all too much for the sixteen-year-old and she could not be blamed for losing her stoicism. “I’m sorry you’ve come such a long way only to die.”

  “We have a chance if we band together,” he insisted, his youthful face set like a sharp axe.

  “We need to do more than band together,” she replied. “We, all of us, need to fight, and the Guardians say they won’t.”

  “And I say they will. The reason I was sent with the Queen was to decide what sort of person she was and whether or not she could be trusted. I believe she is far more noble than everyone gave her credit for. Everyone except for you.”

  Shaina looked hurt by this and pulled the offered spoon back. “I always thought she was great. She was nice to me when no one else was. And she cured people. And she beat the Corsairs, something no one can do. And she was great.”

  Troy bowed to her. “I should have listened to you. In my pride I failed. I would like to fix that. We don’t have a lot of time. Is there any way I can borrow a ship?”

  “Take the Queen’s Revenge,” Jenn said, immediately. Not only was she their fastest ship, Jenn knew that if it was flying before the wind out on the bay, she’d be able pretend Mike was on her, coaxing every ounce of speed out of her sails, perhaps laughing and definitely flashing that white grin of his.

  Troy bowed once, wincing as he came back up, and then ran from the room, ignoring the spoon Shaina held out for him. “Go as well, Shaina and make sure he eats. Donna, if you would go as well.” Jenn pulled the older woman aside. “Make sure she doesn’t fall overboard.”

  The appearance of Troy created a buzz of excitement that Jenn took advantage of. She used the brief burst of excitement to wring even more work from her exhausted people. Although she had no hope of prevailing, Jenn decided to sell their lives as dearly as she could. Their ammo situation was dire and they had a scant few radio controlled detonators. On the other hand they had a few hundred pounds of explosives, smoke generators by the dozens, and more nets, buoys and rope than she knew what to do with.

  Mike had known. With his innate sense of everything nautical, he was as diabolical as Jillybean when he was on the water. With him gone, she didn’t know who to turn to. “Deaf Mick?” She laughed at her little joke. There was no way she could trust that one and made sure he was kept away from any of the boats.

  A sigh escaped her. She really couldn’t think of anyone. “There’s always Troy, if he comes back that is.”

  He came back, flying along with a crowd of sails. With him were Bishop Wojdan and Commander Walker. They stood on deck, not gazing toward the island but out towards the Golden Gate where the Corsair ships were edging closer. Even with their soldiers marching up and down the entire length of the bridge, they smelled a trap.

  Jenn waited for them in her office. Unlike the last couple of times, Jenn wasn’t nervous at all. She had nothing to fear now. She also had nothing left to lose.

  When they arrived, Donna swept in, “Your royal Highness, may I present his Excellency Bishop Wojdan.”

  No games this time. She stood to greet him as an equal and shook his hand. She did not do the same with Commander Walker as he remained slightly back and didn’t come forward. Jenn didn’t read anything into this. It was too much of a bother to fret over every little thing. They would either a
ccept her as their queen or not. There was no middle ground.

  Knights Sergeant Troy Holt, who was more presentable in grey armor was with them, standing behind his commander. Knowing he was injured, she offered him a chair.

  “Perhaps we should come to an agreement before anyone sits,” the Bishop said. “We have come to offer an alliance in the hope that joint operations between our two people might overcome our mutual foe.”

  Jenn sighed and sat in her chair, less as some sort of show but because she had not slept the night before and was tired. “Such big words. They’re exhausting. The answer is no.” Jillybean would never have accepted a role in which she would be gradually shoved aside and neither would Jenn.

  For the first time Bishop Wojdan showed more than mild irritation. His soft, round face went red and his jowls shook as he cried, “Arrogant child! Look at where your foolish power politics have gotten us. You’ve divided us at the very moment we need to unite.”

  “Child?” She shrugged. “Yeah, I am that. I’m also queen, and you are a bishop and Walker is a soldier. It’s like we all have our parts to play. The way I see it, if we play them like we’re supposed to we will be united. There aren’t two peoples here. There’s only one and they need spiritual guidance, they need a strong military and they need a head of state. An alliance won’t give that to them. There’ll be bickering. There’ll be mistrust. There’ll be fear.”

  “There already is fear and mistrust,” Wojdan countered. “Have you seen what your leadership has given us?” Unexpectedly, he went to the door and flung it open with a sweeping gesture that included a half bow. “Let’s go up to the roof and if you can show me a single accomplishment of yours, I’ll kiss your ring.” He acted like he meant it. There was a small crowd right outside the door who had heard everything. They were looking at their young queen with poorly hidden doubt.