Flowers Vs. Zombies (Book 6) Native

by Perrin Briar

  “Not in so many words,” Pare said. “But I knew it was a possibility.”

  “I can see I’m dealing with a formidable leader,” the Overlord In Black said.

  “As you must be,” Pare said. “You must be powerful if they were able to sense you so far out at sea.”

  “Not now,” the Overlord In Black said. “But yes, once upon a time. I have a proposal for you.”

  “I’m all ears,” Pare said.

  “How would you like to never fear the undead again?” the Overlord In Black said.

  “My dear boy, I haven’t feared them since this all began,” Pare said.

  “You spend all your time at sea,” the Overlord In Black said. “You must fear the land for some reason.”

  “There’s a difference between being afraid and making the smart play,” Pare said.

  “I agree,” the Overlord In Black said. “I have a smart play for you to take advantage of now. Lash me to your mast and I shall command all undead you meet. I have battled those who team up with the undead. They are having great success because they leverage both their strengths, reducing their individual weaknesses. There’s no reason we can’t do the same. You would command the high seas, I the land. Together we would control everything.”

  Pare nodded, mulling it over.

  “The family here,” the Overlord In Black said. “They are nothing. A mere trifling seven-member army, nothing compared to the victories we have ahead of us.”

  “Seven?” Pare said. “I was led to believe there were just six.”

  “No,” the Overlord In Black said. “Seven. The family, plus the boy.”

  “The boy?” Pare said. “What boy?”

  “Jim,” the Overlord In Black said. “I Tasted his blood. I know how important he is to you. I can give you exactly what you want, the location of all your weapons caches. I give them to you, as a gift. No need to fight me for them. You don’t need to bother with Jim. I know everything he does. Further, I know something about him that you don’t…

  “It’s quite delicious. I know you’ll get a real kick out of it. So, what do you say? Help me take the Flowers hostage, and you get the boy, Jim. Not that you’ll need him. You have something better now. You have me.”

  “You make a compelling argument,” Pare said.

  “I was hoping you’d see it that way,” the Overlord In Black said. “You may think it over. There is no rush. Speak to one of the undead aboard your vessel and I’ll hear your decision.”

  “No need,” Pare said. “I have my answer for you already.”

  She lashed out with her knife, jamming it into the creature’s neck, severing his spinal cord. She held the undead messenger in her arms and whispered in his ear.

  “I would not work with you if you were the last overlord left in the world,” Pare said. “You are making this offer from a position of great weakness. You have no value, and I have no use for you. You have already given me what I need, and you give it to me without guard. You do not even know the value you had. You are pathetic.”

  Pare twisted her blade and slowly slit the undead’s throat open. The undead gargled as Pare lay the creature down on the ground, in a pool of his own congealed blood.

  Pare wiped her blade on the Lurcher’s dirty clothing. It was still bleeding out, spreading across the jungle ground.

  This was turning out to be an interesting experience, Pare thought, more interesting than she had expected.

  She pushed on through the undergrowth, but it wasn’t five minutes before she got another surprise. She heard the snapping of twigs and froze. Something was behind her. More zombies, coming to take vengeance at her having rebuked the overlord’s offer? But no, the footsteps stopped behind her. Observing.

  “You can come out,” Pare said. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “No,” a voice said. “But you would if you could. Captain Shih.”

  A shiver traveled the length of Captain Shih’s spine. She wasn’t afraid—she wasn’t afraid of anything—but she felt excitement easily enough. And like a fine wine, it had to be savored at every opportunity.

  “Jim,” Captain Shih said. “I’m so glad I found you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  JIM PUSHED the bound and gagged Captain Shih. She tried to find her feet, failed, and hit the dirt at Bill’s feet.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Bill said.

  “She is not who she says she is,” Jim said. “She is Captain Shih of The Red Flag. She came here to feel you out, to get a sense of who you are and how you’ll react in any given situation.”

  “Wait, what?” Bill said.

  “She always goes in first,” Jim said. “She likes the thrill. She likes to talk to the people who will be her victims. An aperitif before the main meal.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Bill said.

  “Believe it,” Jim said.

  “You can’t be serious,” Bill said.

  It was the third time he’d said it and he still couldn’t believe it. The whole family stood before them, taking in the scene.

  “You’re telling me that the sweet woman I was chatting to is the infamous Captain Ching Shih?” Bill said. “This woman is the pirate lord? But how is that even possible? Shih died centuries ago.”

  “She’s not the original Shih,” Jim said. “She just believes herself to be the captain reborn. She’s intent on achieving what the original Ching Shih did, and take over the whole Asia region.”

  “Then why would she want us to join her communities?” Bill said.

  “She has no communities,” Fritz said.

  “No communities?” Bill said.

  “No, they are there,” Jim said. “But they don’t belong to Ching Shih. She just took them, pillaging them whenever she wants something. They are not loyal to her. They are afraid of her.”

  “Then why didn’t she just take us?” Liz said. “She probably has enough men.”

  “Because she’d prefer for you to hand yourselves over to her instead,” Jim said. “And if you don’t go with her, she will take you anyway.”

  “That’s all fine and good,” Bill said. “But how can we trust you?”

  “Why would I lie to you?” Jim said.

  “Why indeed,” Liz said, folding her arms.

  Ernest stepped forward.

  “Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “I thought you same as you, but then Jim told me something that made me believe him.”

  “He told you something?” Liz said. “How could you believe him? You’ve only known him a few days.”

  “No,” Jim said. “We’ve known each other a lot longer than that.”

  Bill and Liz frowned at Jim, cocking their heads to one side and peering closer at his face.

  “You’re not going to recognize me by thinking,” Jim said. “You’re going to have to relax your mind before you can see me for who I really am.”

  They did, but they shook their heads.

  “You really can’t see it?” Jim said. “I admit, I was worried you would recognize me straight away when you saw me.”

  “Enough games,” Bill said. “Who are you?”

  “Well, I’m not Jim,” Jim said.

  Bill blinked.

  “I’m not following you,” he said.

  “So you’re someone else?” Liz said. “Who?”

  “You were always very nice to me,” Jim said.

  His voice had changed. It was softer, gentler, more effeminate. There was no denying it now. Liz clasped her hand over her mouth in shock.

  “No,” she said. “You can’t be.”

  “I’m afraid I am,” Jim said.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Ernest said.

  “What?” Bill said, still not knowing who he was looking at.

  “I thought you were dead,” Liz said. “We all did. We saw your father turn into one of them—into a Lurcher and then, and then…”

  “But you never saw me die,” Jim said. “Because, obviously, I didn’t.�
��

  “Where have you been this whole time?” Liz said.

  “Say my name,” Jim said.

  “No,” Liz said. “I can’t.”

  She was surprised to find she actually couldn’t say it. Her lips felt like they weren’t her own as he forced them to make the first sound of Jim’s real name.

  “Jenny,” Liz said. “You’re Jenny Montrose.”

  Jim/Jenny smiled.

  Chapter Twelve

  ERNEST RECALLED the moment he had heard those same words from Jim/Jenny’s mouth just thirty minutes earlier.

  That’s where I’ve seen her before! he’d thought. He knew he recognized her, but somehow his brain had closed off that possibility. Of course it would—why would he allow himself to think it was Jenny when he’d assumed she was already dead? Especially since she had been on board The Adventurer. They hadn’t seen her during their escape and had assumed she hadn’t made it.

  Assumptions. They always got you into trouble.

  Jenny was the daughter of one of Bill’s former colleagues in Chucerne. Dennis Montrose had been a doctor—a relatively poor one—and decided to uproot his family to escape an illegitimate child whom he feared would turn up on his doorstep one day. He followed in the Flower family’s footsteps to start a new life in the Philippines. He and his wife Marie had perished in the fire that had claimed The Adventurer—the name of the ferry that was taking the family to a new home.

  They had thought Jenny had been one of the unfortunates to have perished, but clearly that wasn’t the case. She had decided to dress as a man. Why was anyone’s guess.

  “But you look so different!” Liz said.

  “It’s amazing what a haircut, starvation, and pure terror will do to a person, isn’t it?” Jenny said.

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Bill said.

  “In the new world, you learn to be cautious,” Jenny said. “Very cautious. Do you think I would have lasted as long as I did if I didn’t keep my secret?”

  “But you know me,” Ernest said. “You know all of us.”

  Jenny’s eyes drifted away.

  “You never really know anyone,” she said.

  Suddenly when Ernest looked at her, he found it difficult to see Jim’s face any longer. He saw only Jenny. It was obvious to him who she was now. How could he have not seen it before?

  “Rupert told you our story,” Jenny said. “It’s all true, save for who I really am, and a subplot that he was not privy to. I escaped The Adventurer, knocked unconscious by an explosion, and floated on debris. I don’t know how long I was out there for, but when I woke up, I was on board a ship, in a cabin. I had no idea where I was or what I was doing there.

  “There was one shipmate, known only as Smee, the one who found me, protected me, and hid me from the others. He’d cut my hair and given me a boy’s clothes so no one would know I was a girl. It’s thanks to him I’m still alive.”

  “Then what happened?” Ernest said.

  “Everything we told you,” Jenny said. “I worked the ship, grew callouses, and learned everything there is to know about sailing. But it was only a matter of time before they found out I was really a girl. It was difficult going to the toilet. Sometimes I had to hold it all day. I stopped drinking water, what little there was already.

  “I started getting headaches and couldn’t concentrate. I was doomed. And some of the men looked at me in a funny way, not a good way, and I thought that to them, maybe it didn’t matter if I was a boy or a girl. They would do what they wanted with me anyway. I knew I had to get away.

  “But I wasn’t the only one who wanted to escape. Many of the crew did too, discovering they’d gotten more than they’d bargained for under the patronage of Captain Shih. She is evil, a bad egg. I worked for her, as Smee’s personal cabin boy. As first mate, it was his job to run the captain’s ship. He was also in charge of developing a system to recall the location of all the buried caches, without leaving a trace. I followed him, and remembered those things that he could not. We were a team.

  “There were rumors about what we did together in his room at night, none of it with even a hint of evidence. He was a perfect gentleman. He even gave me his bed to sleep on at night. I let him sleep with me, top and tail. There’s no need for a good man to sleep on the hard floor, I think.

  “He refused at first, but he gave up after the third night of sleeping on the hard floor. There is honesty among pirates, not that they like to show it. Then one day he had a heart attack. It was strange, because he had never shown anything but the best health. But sometimes there is no rhyme or reason for things. I knew then there would no longer be any protection for me.

  “I had to escape, get away. The last words from Smee was the emergency escape plan he’d made for himself to get off the ship. He had planned on taking me with him, but at the time things had been going well for us. But it turned out his plans weren’t as closely a guarded secret as he thought they were. Two other crewmates knew what he had been up to.”

  “Rupert and Manuel,” Bill said.

  “There’s only so much secrecy you can expect when you’re jammed on a boat full to bursting with desperate men,” Jenny said. “They must have known what he was up to by what he was hoarding for himself. They would have kept a close eye on old Smee and me. They were waiting for me when I headed for the boat.

  “They threatened me, saying they would tell the others if I made any noise. I often wonder why they didn’t kill me that night. It would have lightened the load and guaranteed they would have made it to shore faster than they otherwise would have. I guess they wanted a lackey to do all their cooking and cleaning for them. But we never got that far. We were captured by the natives.”

  “So it’s true,” Liz said, looking at the figure lying crumpled in the dirt before them. “Won’t the pirates have protocols in place? If she’s not back within a certain amount of time? They’ll come looking for her?”

  “Yes,” Jenny said.

  “How long do we have?” Bill said.

  “Until morning,” Jenny said.

  “Then they come?” Bill said.

  “Then they come,” Jenny said with a nod.

  “Couldn’t we play innocent and tell her crew we met with her, that she left and never came back?” Ernest said. “That will at least buy us some time.”

  “And you think the pirates will just return back to their ship?” Jenny said. “No harm, no foul?”

  “No,” Bill said. “They will attack us anyway, tearing this place apart looking for her.”

  “Then what do we do?” Liz said.

  “We fight,” Bill said.

  Jenny stepped forward.

  “They’re after me,” she said. “Not you. Or your family. Me.”

  “After you?” Fritz said. “What do you mean?”

  “The maps,” Ernest said with a nod. “The location of the caches of weapons.”

  Jenny nodded.

  “As I said, I worked with Smee on the secret locations of the caches,” she said. “Smee was their cartographer. With no electricity or modern technology they had to revert to old ways of navigating, using the stars and reading the swells. Smee made their maps, and it was his responsibility to make the maps of the places they were going to and where they had buried their treasure.”

  “Treasure?” Ernest said. “They don’t still collect treasure?”

  “They do,” Jenny said. “But it might not be the kind of treasure you’re thinking of. They collected guns, ammunition, enough to destroy anyone they came across. They spread it across a number of different islands, but the captain is nothing if not cautious, fearing mutiny, and ordered for the maps to be destroyed. Smee and I had to remember the location of all the caches.”

  “How many men are there?” Bill said.

  “Difficult to say,” Jenny said. “They were always changing. One day you would wake up and a few would be missing, and then replaced again before noon. Usually there were around seventy to eighty
men in all, I’d say. And they’ll be armed. Heavily.”

  The family hardly had time to recover from their previous encounter and now they already had to deal with this, a shipful of hardened pirates?

  Chapter Thirteen

  RUPERT’S BREATH sawed in and out of his throat, its teeth sharp and unrestrained. He’d never felt this exhausted his whole life. And yet he somehow kept on moving, kept on going, fueled by his will alone. One step after another, and another, he ate up the jungle.

  But in the back of his mind was the knowledge that no matter how fast he went, no matter how far, Manuel would always be there, always on his tail, always ready to take him out at a moment’s notice. He ought to just give up and be done with it.

  But he couldn’t. It just wasn’t in his DNA. It wasn’t in Rupert to give up. He had never given up on anything his whole life—even those things he knew he should have. Why? He couldn’t say. But he had to keep going. He just had to.

  Human hope was a terrible and dangerous thing. It forced desperate men to maintain their current trajectory, no matter what. But eventually hope should die. It had to die, to leave way for despair to do its work, and allow the person to finally, sweetly, pass into unending silence. Except Rupert didn’t have that feeling, that sense. There was never a time when he lost hope.

  Despite all the things he had done, all the evil he had committed, Rupert was one of the most hope-filled vessels in existence. The best survivors always were. It was those who lost hope, lost their emotional footing, that ultimately ended up losing their lives. They gave up when they shouldn’t have. They should have kept going, should have kept fighting the good fight, because it was the only one worth having. The only one we were all eventually judged upon when the time came.

  Rupert skidded to a halt, estranged hair clouding his view and making it difficult to see. But there was no missing the cliff edge he was perched upon, the drop of a hundred feet on the other side. His feet were balanced on the edge. He leaned back, and fell onto his backside, scrambling away from the edge.

  He turned to look toward the jungle foliage. There was no Manuel. Not yet. Rupert needed to keep moving, keep going…