Generation Z_The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  Jenn said, she would try. Stu wasn’t ready to give up the bridge just yet. He rushed across to the bay side of the bridge where he was safe from the gunfire. Almost directly below him was one of the Corsair boats slowly coming through a gap in the rope. “Over here!” he cried. The cowering defenders picked up their rocks and eagerly rushed to him. In a minute they made a shambles of the boat, which drifted away, sitting lower and lower in the water.

  Although the ropes were cut in two more places, the gaps between the buoys were relatively narrow for the imprecisely controlled sailboats. With the wind slewing around the compass, they couldn’t just race through. Six more boats were sunk and another four were damaged so badly that their battered and half-dead crews struggled just to keep them afloat.

  Still, five or six boats managed to squeeze through without much damage and soon were out of range of the rocks and were shooting back. Stu realized it was time to give up the bridge. His defenders were now being pelted with fire from two directions and the only safe place was in the middle lanes.

  “Break it off, James,” he said over the radio. “We have to retreat. Come in, James. James?”

  “I’m here, but I don’t know…I don’t think…they’re really close.” It was hard to tell if James was winded or frightened out of his wits.

  It was only then that Stu really paid attention to what had been a steady rumble of gunfire from the headlands. “What’s going on? James? We need to retreat!”

  “They’re too close! They’re all around us! I-I don’t think we’ll be able to…Get down…” Gunfire erupted, coming through the radio so loudly that it drowned out James’ voice.

  Stu listened to this with his heart in his throat. “Hold on, James!” he screamed into the radio. “I’ll be right there.” He had put his rifle down so he could hurl rocks; now he looked for it and seeing it leaned against a tow truck.

  Frantically, he ran for it but just as he grabbed it and spun, he heard Jillybean say, “Don’t you dare, Stu! Your mission is to get your team off that bridge and get them back here as soon as possible.”

  A mile away, she sat perched behind the long telescope. She could see his face go red as he slowly picked up his gun. He looked frozen in indecision and pulled in two directions as more urgent gunfire rattled over the radio and drifted across the bay.

  “Listen to me, Stu,” she said, trying her best to remain calm, trying her best to shut out the cawing voices that kept bursting out of the darkness. “The battle has just begun and we need you. Don’t throw your life away. Please.”

  She was pretty sure she sounded sane. Even Jenn, nodding with crooked-smile encouragement, thought so and yet Stu still hesitated, caught between a rock and a hard place. He had a duty to his queen, but how in good conscience was he supposed to leave James and who knew how many others to die?

  “Damn it!” Jillybean snapped as indecision glued him in place. “Look around you, Stu. Look at them.” Obediently he took in the frightened faces of what was left of the bridge’s defenders. For the most part they were Islanders and Hill People. He had known all of them for most of his life. They were scared out of their wits.

  “Where’s the leader among them?” Jillybean whispered. There wasn’t one. They were frightened and pitiful. She was sure that if Stu left them half would run away and the other half would be captured. “Bring them back, Stu.”

  He took a last long look up at the Marin Headlands where the battle was going full throttle, before he turned and headed south. Jillybean almost melted in relief.

  “Why don’t you just admit it to everyone that you love him?” Jenn asked.

  “So I can be like you?”

  Jenn had already swiveled the telescope, scanning the only part of the south bay they could see from their angle. She was searching for a lone black sail. The Saber wasn’t due back for at least an hour, but that hadn’t stopped her from gazing in that direction every chance she could.

  Once again the south bay was empty.

  Jillybean appeared sympathetic, or so she hoped—her emotions and her emotional responses were all over the board. “He’ll make it. Trust me. The plan is working.” So far it was arguably working exactly as she had stated it would, though she had not counted on the high casualties among the defenders of the bridge; only thirty-three of the hundred that had left that morning were unhurt. Fourteen more were wounded and the rest were dead or soon would be as the battle began slackening on the Marin Headlands.

  The losses had not been in vain. They had inflicted a terrible toll on the Corsairs. A telescope was not needed to see the hundreds of bodies floating on the surface and the many crippled sailboats that were slowly sinking, or hanging from the uncut ropes like the corpses of insects on forgotten strands of spiderwebs.

  “How much more will they take?” Jillybean asked.

  Jenn looked up from the telescope unsure if Jillybean had been talking to her. All morning she had fluctuated between muttering to herself and all out screaming furiously at nothing at all. It was why they were alone on the partially collapsed roof of the laundry building.

  “Not much more, I bet,” Jenn said. She gestured at the bridge and the wreckage. “They took a real beating. I mean a bad one, and I know I wouldn’t want any more.”

  Jillybean stopped in mid-pace, another habit that had gone on and on that morning. She contemplated Jenn, first with a contemptuous sneer then with a start, and a guilty look. “Sorry. So you think one more good smack across the knuckles will do it?”

  “Smack across the knuckles?” Jenn sniffed. “That was more than a smack across the knuckles.”

  “Hmmm.” Jillybean said, dropping down into one of the two chairs that little, one-armed Aaron Altman had dragged to the roof. While Jenn’s chair was little more than a stool, Jillybean’s was an immense reclinable hunk of leather that weighed more than Aaron. Despite his efforts which had nearly ended in a hernia, Jillybean’s chair had hardly been used. She had sat down twice, both times being little more than pit stops in her endless pacing.

  Now, she actually sat back, her fingers steepled, her eyes closed as she considered Jenn’s words.

  For once the telescope didn’t pull Jenn to it. She found herself staring at Jillybean. The Queen had always been striking: flawless white skin, full lips, a small but regal nose, her heart-shaped face framed by that mass of hair. All of this was dominated by great fluid, blue eyes but with those eyes shut, she became more beautiful.

  Gone was the intensity that made Jenn feel as though her flesh was transparent and her mind a coverless open book.

  For a good minute she sat there before she cracked her eyes. Shaking her head, she sighed. “No. I’m sorry, but I believe you are wrong. They’ll keep coming. With every small defeat, their leader will be in that much more need of a victory. That’s how these petty tyrants are. They rule through fear and domination which means they can never be seen as weak. And what is more weak than running home with your tail between your legs?”

  Again Jillybean hopped up, this time going to the very edge of the crumbling building. Putting her foot on the wall she leaned out to watch the Corsairs struggle through the debris around the bridge. She counted a hundred and thirty-nine boats, some with gaping holes in their sails and others looking as though their hulls were barely seaworthy. So far it had been a disaster for them.

  “But they won’t stop,” she said, again mostly to herself, her voice soft and far away. “They haven’t met defeat before, only victory after victory. They don’t know what it is to lose. And they’re not like us, Jenn. Their leader is a sadist. That’s what means he gets off on hurting people. He’s evil. He’s so evil he makes Eve look like a saint. Ha! Saint Eve.”

  For maybe the tenth time that day she was in between personalities, see-sawing back and forth, and when she had said “Ha,” it had come out robotically.

  Jenn should have tried to right her mind, but she was somewhat enthralled by these revelations. “You act like you know their leader. Hav
e you met him before?”

  Slowly, Jillybean shook her head. “The Black Captain? No, I never met him but I’ve studied him. I’ve interrogated his men and questioned his runaways. I know him inside and out. And I know that he’s the greatest threat to the island we have yet faced and probably will ever face in our lifetimes.”

  “The island?” It didn’t seem like she was talking about Alcatraz.

  “Bainbridge. I warned the old governor when the Corsairs had just a few boats. Back then they couldn’t decide if they were fishermen, traders or pirates. And I warned Deanna when the Black Captain was calling himself ‘The’ Captain and first started raiding settlements. And I warned Neil and then…then it was too late. Almost too late. Right?” She turned vacant eyes on Jenn. In the bright morning light her pupils were pinpricks and her eyes were like blue coins.

  Jenn took a step back.

  “But I could do something. Just no nukes. That’s what Neil said. No nukes. You can’t control the fallout. There’ll be collateral damage and we can’t have that.” She laughed loud and harsh.

  The only thing Jenn really understood in all that was the fallout part. She knew it was that invisible poison killing the people in Cathlamet. Could Jillybean make fallout? Was a part of her that evil? Jenn’s head was spinning over this when Aaron Altman ran up the stairs, spilling water from a pitcher he was carrying.

  “I can’t believe we’re winning!” he piped. “That’s what they’re saying down at the dock.”

  Jillybean blinked. “Dock?” She looked around in bewilderment. “Oh, right. Alcatraz. We’re on Alcatraz.”

  Aaron wasn’t put off by her strange answer. She was the “Mad Queen” after all and it was part of what made her so great in his eyes. The Coven had always been so stodgy while there was no telling what Jillybean was going to do next. It made her exciting and mysterious. When she took the water, the water which he had poured all by himself without being told by anyone, he thought his heart was going to burst.

  “Thank you for this,” she said, her smile making him swoon. He walked away, his head swimming in a mist. The second he was gone, Jillybean’s smile disappeared. She snuck a look Jenn’s way and saw the anxious look on the teen’s face and knew that she must have said something wrong. Jillybean tried to dismiss her own words with a simple wave of her hand. “I can go on and on, but you shouldn’t mind it too much. I’m crazy. Everyone says so, right?”

  Jillybean’s memory of the last few minutes was shrouded in smoke, dark smoke, and within it was that terrible presence, the one that burbled hideous laughter and screamed insanities—the one that was worse than Eve.

  Jillybean tried to reset everything by saying, “What matters is that the Black Captain will not be stopped. Do me a favor, Jenn turn that scope around.”

  They both looked south in search of hope, but the bay was empty. They tried the radio and got only static.

  For an hour, Jenn kept keying the send button and repeating, “Mike, come in, Mike,” and got nothing in return. During that time, Jillybean paced along the roof, pausing momentarily at each turn. On the far side she would gaze out at the Corsairs as they assembled their fleet once more into three nearly equal parts: two groups comprising almost a hundred ships were to the west of Angel Island and a third group of forty just to the east of it.

  When she paced back the other way she paused to watch the Puffer shuttling the surviving defenders of the bridge across half a mile of water to the Floating Fortress. Stu was with the last group to leave. He’d been fighting, not the Corsairs, but the living dead which had spotted the frightened group twenty minutes before and were closing in from all sides.

  The raging fires Gerry had lit had done their job and now San Francisco was crawling with zombies. It meant her far left flank was secure. Unfortunately, her right flank was wide, wide open. There were countless piers on the Oakland side of the bay where the Corsairs could land hundreds of men, completely cutting off all retreat.

  “And people think we’re winning?” It was preposterous. The danger they faced now had multiplied a hundred fold. Their annihilation was staring them right in the face with nothing standing between them except two miles of calm water, gentle airs and flights of gulls, winging by to feed on the dead Corsairs.

  She turned about and paced back the other way once again, fretting over her decisions, worrying every aspect of them to shreds. Just then it seemed like a terrible mistake to have separated her small force in the face of superior numbers. Historically it led to disaster and it seemed that in the present it would as well.

  They had barely enough men and women to defend the Floating Fortress properly and not even a fifth of what was needed to defend Treasure Island. Worse, the island was separated from the barge by a half a mile of water. When the fighting started there would be no way to get back and forth. Even the simplest commander could see that each could be destroyed in detail.

  It was practically an invitation for an attack…

  Which is what you want, ain’t it? It was the dark voice again bubbling up out of the deep cracks in her mind. Jillybean didn’t need to hear this, even if it was the truth.

  Thankfully, Donna suddenly broke in on her thoughts, appearing at the stairwell door and saying, “It’s time.” The Puffer was skating across the water, racing in a terrible hurry. The Corsair fleets to the west were breaking up, the larger of the two tacking west so that it could come at Alcatraz with the wind directly on its stern. The other two companies of boats started straight across the bay, moving with surprising swiftness. One on a heading for the Floating Fortress and the other towards the blunt north end of Treasure Island.

  Jillybean knew each could shift their direction at anytime and converge, coming at any point of her defense from three directions.

  “It’s time,” Jillybean repeated to Jenn who was taking one last look to the south in a vain search for the Saber.

  Chapter 43

  The Puffer was the last of the boats, the dreadfully small boats, to leave Alcatraz, flying along at breakneck speed toward Treasure Island. It hadn’t gotten far before red smoke erupted from the side of the largest Corsair ship. It had to be the signal to attack since all of the Corsair ships suddenly unfurled every scrap of sail they possessed and charged with shocking speed across the low waves.

  An eerie silence greeted them. Jillybean had mentioned laughing at the Corsairs, but there wasn’t a single chuckle. There was only a gripping fear that had most of the defenders cowering and praying fervently with mumbling lips, most of them only repeating, “Please God, please God, please God,” over and over.

  The Corsairs came so fast that Jillybean saw they weren’t going to make it to Treasure Island and ordered them to stop under the shadow of the Floating Fortress, where dozens of hands reached out to pull them up the high metal walls. Stu shoved people out of the way to get to Jillybean.

  Although he was the one covered in blood and had a black gash parting his hair on the side of his head, he asked her, “Are you okay?”

  How could she be? The battle, the bodies, the smell of guns wafting over her, the blood…She was on the verge of fading into the darkness inside of her and yet he was there with her, and so was Jenn.

  “Maybe I’m okay. What about you? I should take a look at that…”

  She was interrupted as the far western Corsair squadron, racing with the wind suddenly exploded with the fire of hundreds of guns.

  Screams and pandemonium broke out all over the barge as Stu pulled Jillybean and Jenn inside one of the containers. There was so much noise that it was a few seconds before he realized they weren’t the ones being attacked.

  The fifty or so ships were running down the length of Alcatraz Island where a dozen cooking fires had been purposefully left going. These sent up feeble streams of smoke, but otherwise the island seemed dead. The Corsairs didn’t believe it. The lead boats carried on, blasting in every door and window and sending up a cloud of dust and a rain of cement chips.

&nb
sp; After ripping up the island, they broke off, sweeping north, the tenth boat in line running flags up and down its mast. It was a signal for the center fleet to attack. Almost as if they were running downhill the next squadron of boats raced at the island, blazing away with gunfire. The first ten boats kept going up the island but the rest made a hard landing, sacrificing safety for speed.

  Screaming like madmen the Corsairs rushed over the sides of their boats and charged like marines onto the abandoned island. They went here and there shooting into empty rooms. Soon they were cheering. Every one of them had been sure Alcatraz would be a bloody affair; the hardest nut to crack, just like they were sure that after it fell everything else would be a cake walk.

  It had not been a “free” victory. Along with hundreds of wasted bullets, three men suffered broken ankles and five boats were damaged, two irreparably, when they struck rocks hidden just beneath the surface of the water.

  Still this was minor and the Corsairs eagerly set sail again after leaving a small force behind. They had the wind at their backs and could go where they wanted.

  With the telescope forgotten in the bottom of the Puffer, Jillybean snatched up a pair of binoculars as she ran up the ladder of one of the containers. She watched the flagship; The Black Captain’s immense Sea King. Once more the flags broke out.

  “They’re going to test us!” she said into her radio, speaking to her remaining lieutenants, three of whom, Donna, Stu and Jenn were right next to her. The others were spread out on Treasure Island, trying to hold a 568 acre island with only 350 people. “Keep cool and don’t get caught up in the fighting. Your main job is to keep me abreast of the situation and to relay my orders. The first of which is to take out their ship captains.”

  “You heard her!” Stu cried. The Floating Fortress had become strangely silent and still as everyone sat in frightened little clumps. “You know your stations,” he went on. “Get there and stay there.”

  A terrified cry went up, “They’re coming!”