Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained

by Meredith, Peter

  “I’ll grant you that he should be afraid,” the Bishop conceded. “But will he just give her up? I doubt it. He’ll want something in return.”

  “I’m sure he will. It’s why I plan to trade myself for Jillybean.” The Bishop had been about to go back up on his toes when she said this and was so shocked that he stumbled in place. Jenn caught his arm. “Yes, me. And I think he’ll go for it. After all, I’m new, I’m sane, and I’m much more of a threat compared to the girl he’s been torturing for the last few weeks.”

  The Bishop started shaking his bald head. “But…”

  She silenced him with a snap of her fingers. “There will be no argument on this. I have spoken.”

  He sucked in a long, slow breath, held it, ready to spew a dozen arguments, and then let it go in a tired sigh. Her face had become stone and her eyes cold with determination. He would not be able to change her mind, that was obvious, and with her hold on the people utterly cemented after the victory and the strange circumstances that led up to it, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to change anyone else’s either. He bowed from the shoulders.

  “Thank you. Now if you’ll carry out my request, I would greatly appreciate it.” He turned to go but she stopped him with a word. “Your Excellency? One more thing. To me she is not the ‘Old Queen.’ She has always been my queen. She has always been greater than me in every way. I want you to remember that…when I’m gone.”

  Chapter 41

  Bainbridge Island, Washington

  “The war is not over,” Jillybean stated with quiet intensity. Her eyes no longer held the least bit of white. Surrounding the marvelous blue was an intense red. Although the actual mortality rate among their casualties had been staggeringly high, there had been enough wounded to keep her at the operating table around the clock. She didn’t know what day it was. Worse, she could barely keep track of who she was at any given moment.

  She left it up to Emily and Neil to keep Eve away. When Ipes was in charge, he was punch-drunk and fretted about the state of her body, constantly suggesting she be “groomed,” something no one understood. When Sadie was in charge, she went immediately to sleep and if shaken, she would whisper, “Five more minutes, mom.” She never got the five minutes. Jillybean would usually come gasping awake, filled with guilt that she was sleeping while people were dying.

  Deanna, who was running on fumes herself, had fully expected Jillybean to sow doom and gloom. She smiled as a politician should and told her, “It’s over for us. We won thanks to you, and we’re very grateful for all you’ve done and all you’re doing for the wounded. Perhaps you should take a break. Lord knows you need it and deserve it.”

  Jillybean rubbed the grit from her eyes before she brushed the idea of resting aside. “We won a battle, not the war. As long as he remains alive and in power, he’s a threat to Bainbridge.” Deanna’s practiced smile remained undimmed and Jillybean added, “As long as he’s alive he’s also a threat to you, and to Emily. You do understand that he could have had her killed at any time in the last five years. Throttled in her sleep. Poisoned. Her throat slit from ear to ear. This is what we can look forward to, and this time, I don’t think he’ll wait.”

  Deanna’s smile had disappeared. She drew back from the table, her eyes flicking to her daughter’s face. Emily was tight-lipped at the suggestion that she might have her throat slit. As horrible as the idea was, Deanna knew that carrying on the war would be worse. More battles, more corpses, more grieving mothers. She clung to the notion of peace. “We have no proof he’ll do anything like that.”

  “I’m proof,” Neil Martin noted, pointing at his grey face. He was dressed in a teal sweater vest, which matched his crocs, dark blue Jordache jeans, and a Seattle Mariners baseball cap that hid the hideous gash across his hairline. Emily had finally sewn his scalp back in place, but her hand at stitching made him look like a small version of Frankenstein’s monster trying to pass himself off as a soccer-dad.

  “He’s done it before and now he has more incentive to go after you,” Neil said, scratching up under the baseball cap. “When he strikes again, he will strike at the head.”

  “Then it’ll be Jillybean he goes after,” Deanna answered. “She’s the brains around here. You should be worried about yourself.”

  Jillybean demonstrated her level of fear by yawning like a cave bear. “I suppose I am a little frightened,” she admitted. “If he’s animated by revenge rather than victory and self-preservation, I would be the likely target. But he’s more of a rational thinker than an emotional one, and as such he will target you, Deanna. He may fear me as a military leader, but he knows that I’m not loved as you are. I do not inspire the people of Bainbridge like you do. I could never motivate the entire population of the island to march across Washington and attack Hoquiam like you could.”

  Deanna jerked in her chair. “Hold on. You want us to attack? After everything that’s gone on? Oh, Jillybean.” She began shaking her head, sadly. “Why? Tell me why…no, first tell me how. How can we possibly win? You see how they are. Our people are not warriors. Yes, they might have won this battle, but it took everything they had and it left them dry. I can tell you right now they aren’t going anywhere.”

  Another yawn, this one springing tears to Jillybean’s eyes. It went on and on, and when it was finally done Jillybean swayed in her seat. It took her a second to remember where they were in the conversation. “Oh, right, attacking. They’ll do it, but only if you demand it. And if they think I have a foolproof plan. And most especially they will when they see all the explosives we have.”

  Deanna jerked a second time. She shot a glance at the closed door of her office before she hunched low and hissed, “Watch what you’re saying. If anyone found out that you had all those bombs squirreled away in the wall, they might hang you alongside Deberha. Speaking of which.” She checked her watch and saw that she was going to be late for the execution. There had been no reason to delay the sentence, just like there had been no real reason to delay the trial. The battle hadn’t been over an hour before Deanna held a five-minute trial and condemned Deberha Perkins to death for her crimes. Mary Page and Rod McCade received banishment as their punishments.

  “Forget Deberha for the moment,” Jillybean said. “Don’t worry about the explosives. We’ll tell everyone that I had the components already and that it was just a matter of assembling them. No one will care. In fact, they’ll be relieved we have them. And, before you ask, I don’t have a plan. Not one set in concrete. I have ideas, however, and none of them involve sitting around while the Captain recoups his strength and sends assassins after us. If you think our people are weak now, what will they be like when you and I are dead? Who will lead then? Emily? She’s the only person I trust to do the job…”

  Neil harrumphed her, hawking up something black and chewy in the process. Much to everyone’s discomfort, he swallowed it as he folded his arms across his sweater vest in indignation. Jillybean sighed. “No offense, Neil, but you’ll never be voted in as governor. We have to look at this realistically. When Deanna is murdered, the position of governor will cease to exist. Without leadership it will be only a matter of time before people start leaving or worse start turning to the Corsairs. This is the reality of our situation. It’s why we need to strike now. According to the prisoners Neil was kind enough to question with such thoroughness, the Captain has split his forces, half to attack us and half to attack the queen in the south.”

  She’s dead, you know, Eve whispered. You left her without an army or a navy, and no one to turn to. Yes, she’s long dead. And so are those useless Guardians. We both know how weak they were. They’re all dead because of you, Jilly. Because you were the weakest of all.

  “Shut up,” Jillybean whispered, not wanting to hear the truth, not wanting to picture the Corsairs swarming over the Golden Gate Bridge and sailing through San Francisco bay, firing torpedoes into the outgunned and outnumbered Guardian ships. She took a deep breath and went on, “Like I said,
half the Corsairs went south and no matter what anyone says, Alcatraz can only be starved out and that will take time. Weeks. Making this our best opportunity, Deanna. You saw how the Corsairs left. We chased them out of the Sound with their tails between their legs. We have their ammo and all of their supplies. We’re practically ready to start marching on them this second.”

  “And then what?” Deanna asked. “We march out to Hoquiam and then?”

  “Then we’ll figure it out,” Jillybean snapped, her eyes darkening.

  Emily cleared her throat and put her hand on top of Jillybean’s. “I think we should listen to her. She’s been right about all of this from the start. But if you want another opinion we can ask Gunner. He’s a genius when it comes to fighting and strategy and that sort of thing, and if he hadn’t been hurt, he could have won that battle, too.”

  “Gunner? No. I don’t want to bother him. He’s…” She had been about to say On death’s door, but as her daughter had some sort of strange preoccupation with him, she amended her words to, “He’s still recovering.”

  “Talk to him,” Emily insisted. “You owe him that.”

  Deanna saw the same stubborn look in her eye that her father used to have and knew that simply giving in would save her from having to hear Emily say, “But mom!” every five minutes as she came up with each new reason why she should go bother a dying man. She agreed but only if she was allowed to go alone and if Jillybean went to sleep for at least two hours.

  The stipulations were agreed to and as Emily and Neil frog-marched a drooping Jillybean to the bed she had left months before in the middle of the night, Deanna went to the crowded, chlorine-smelling clinic. A person might have expected it to be a somber place filled with the moans of the dying, instead it was bright and buzzing.

  Jillybean hadn’t just encouraged visitation of the wounded, she had practically demanded it of friends and family, and the turnout was amazing. There were three visitors for every patient and with the endless chatter the clinic felt more like a bar than a hospital. A battle had been won against great odds and everyone had a story to tell.

  Only one patient was without visitors: Gunner. He had six different tubes running in and out of him, and he hated them all. Even then, so sound asleep that Deanna’s knock went unheard, he wore a scowl so fierce that it made her hesitate to touch him, fearing that he would come awake like an angry bear and tear himself wide open.

  She found herself staring at his ruined face. It was a face that might have been handsome once, long before. Now, it stirred only pity and revulsion in her. Neither feeling was fair to him. If Emily’s many stories of Gunner were true, he had the heart of a knight and that should be what counted.

  Her presence woke him. His eyes cracked and immediately he felt naked without his mask. He started to pull the sheet up to cover himself, but she put her hand on his, stopping him.

  “Weren’t we always taught that it’s what’s on the inside that counts?” she said. Her touch was both soft and electrifying. She smiled when he sucked in his breath. “You act like a boy with a crush. I hate to burst your bubble, but I’m spoken for.”

  She moved her hand to the rail, and when she did, he slid the sheet up so that only one eye showed. “Oh yeah? Is this love of yours anyone I know?” His voice was rough and thick with congealing blood.

  “I think you might have crossed paths with him long ago. I don’t really want to talk about the past. It’s the future I want to talk about.” His single eye showed suspicion. “It’s not about you. It’s about me. Will the Black Captain come after me? You know, with another assassin?”

  “Yes.” There was no hesitation on his part. “He underestimated you before. He thought you were just a politician. Now he knows that you’re a real leader. So, yeah, he’ll want to kill you. With you out of the picture, who will the people turn to? Certainly not Neil or what remains of your council. Emily is too young and Jillybean is too crazy.”

  Deanna didn’t like how this was going. “Jillybean is much more of a threat. She’s a queen, or she was one at least. She could lead.”

  Gunner looked away, considering the idea. “No,” he said, at last. “We’ve become too soft for her. We…I mean you people won’t accept her until it’s too late.”

  “She wants me to attack Hoquiam,” Deanna whispered, leaning in closer to his bedside. She smelled of flowers and soap which had Gunner blinking and trying hard to focus on her words. “She thinks we should march soon, probably tomorrow at the latest. That’s crazy, right? You led these people. You know they won’t storm a wall or a barricade or whatever they have over there. It’ll be a slaughter.”

  “Here’s what I know for a fact: we should trust her.” He took a phlegmy breath and went on, his words slowly losing energy. “We’ve always been able to trust her. And what’s more important, the Corsairs are afraid of her. At least they should be.” He coughed softly and laughed even softer, “Fire. I should have thought of that.” His eyes were losing focus and Deanna remained still until he faded back into sleep.

  She sat there turning his words over in her mind and slowly came to accept that maybe Jillybean was right. They couldn’t just sit around and wait for the Corsairs to return. As much as the idea frightened her, attacking might be the best course of action. There was only one problem: how could she convince her people? What combination of words could possibly sway them? What appeal could she make to get them to storm the lair of the Corsairs?

  After five minutes of running it through her mind, she could think of nothing.

  A check of her watch showed that her time had run out. Deberha was due to be hung and it was only right that the person who had sentenced her be present when the sentence was carried out. Slipping from the room, she made her way to a field out beyond the high school where the execution was to take place. The field held a single apple tree that hadn’t borne fruit in years.

  Deberha was already standing on an old dining room table that had been dragged out there for this one purpose. Her hands tied behind her back, and a rope hung around her neck. The other end of the rope was trussed to a heavy limb that jutted from the trunk twelve feet off the ground. Around the tree was most of the population of the island. Unlike the crowd in the clinic, these people were silent. Their anger filled the field making the air under the tree feel stagnant and warm.

  Deanna pushed through the crowd and came to stand in front of the person she had condemned. “Any last words?” Deberha shook her head without looking up from the ground. Her face was set in a harsh, miserable grimace. Deanna was unmoved by it. “Have you prayed?” Deberha nodded. Deanna stared at her for a long time before asking a final question. “Will the Captain try to kill me again?”

  The question caught Deberha off guard; her head snapped up and she looked into Deanna’s face. It seemed to take a lot out of her, but she nodded and said, “Yeah, he will,” in a trembling voice. This set off a ripple of whispers that spread outward from the tree.

  It also set off a ripple of fear through Deanna. Five people in a row had now predicted her death.

  It made her want to hide because who knew if there were more spies amongst the crowd. One thing she had learned from all of this was that there was no hiding from the Black Captain. He had to be dealt with.

  “The war is not over,” she said in a carrying voice. “As much as I wish it was, we’re not done. The Black Captain will not stop. He will come after me. He will come after Jillybean. He will come after the next governor. He will come after anyone who dares to defy him. He will be back, with more rockets and more ships. This is our choice: do we wait until he kills our leaders and tears down our walls or do we take the fight to him?”

  This was met with complete silence. It seemed like a question of that magnitude was beyond them. They were going to leave it to her to answer her own question. “Both Gunner and Jillybean urged me to take the fight to the Captain, now that he’s weak. Half his fleet is in the south and we have defeated his other half. And…and
…I think they’re right. Now is the time.” This sent out a new and louder ripple.

  Deanna couldn’t let the ripple grow into a wave. “We have to end this once and for all!” she practically cried, her voice gaining strength now that she had made her decision. “We will march on Hoquiam, and heaven help anyone who gets in our way.” She glanced up at Deberha, cocked a sharp eyebrow at her and then pushed the table over. The rope twanged tight. Deanna didn’t watch as Deberha began to kick, the rope digging into her throat, slowly choking her to death.

  Without a glance back, she marched to the Governor’s mansion and began writing out orders. They came streaming out every few minutes and it wasn’t long before the field was empty save for Deberha’s fly-covered body.

  The army of Bainbridge left the next day, fifteen-hundred strong. Sixteen-hundred if the blindfolded prisoners were counted. These were the walking wounded who had been left behind by the Black Captain. He had also left behind nearly a thousand dead and dying bodies. The dying had been sent on with hammer blows—supposedly. A team had been sent among them but whether they actually smashed any heads wasn’t known. They didn’t talk about it.

  It was a slow, cumbersome march. Zombie teams had to be sent ahead to light fires in order to tempt as many of the beasts out of the way as possible. Still a few lurked up in the hills and everyone had to be on guard as the giants came charging down without warning, striking anywhere along the line of marchers. At least the danger kept the formation compact and kept anyone from straggling.

  Fair or not, the blindfolded Corsairs were chained in groups of ten and placed in front and on the outer edges of the column. Sixteen were killed during the three day trek.

  Those that lived were fed a steady diet of misinformation. Instead of an army of fifteen-hundred men and women of dubious courage, the Corsairs were told that there were four-thousand battle-hardened men surrounding them. They were told that Jillybean had created hundreds of rockets all larger than the ones used by the Corsairs. They were told that special suicide bombers would take out the barbed-wire and the concrete pillboxes. They were told that surrender was their only option.