The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

Dango answered, “You did when you shot him and that’s why you’re gonna get strung up by the neck. Okay, give her the pills and let’s be done with this. Come on.” After taking the pills from Jenn, he shuffled them out, keeping a strong hold of his rifle. Mike came up a minute later with a plate of cold catfish and a jug of water. Dango grabbed that, too. “I’ll take it in. You three best get out of here. You’re no longer needed.”

  They had hoped to have a private conversation with Jillybean to figure out a proper escape plan. Now, it was on them. Shut tight in Jenn’s apartment they whispered back and forth, only able to come up with the very simplest of plans.

  Stu boiled it down, “We sneak out, over-power the guard and slip out through that hole beneath the fence. If we go out around two, chances are we’ll find Dango or whoever it is fast asleep.”

  He hoped it would be Orlando on duty and in a way his wish came true.

  After a quick trip back to Stu’s apartment to gather what supplies could fit in their backpacks, the three sat around playing cards until it was almost two a.m. Then Stu got up, cracked his back and said, “I’m going to go see what we’re up against. You guys wait here.”

  He crept out of Jenn’s front door, tiptoed down a flight of stairs and then jumped with his heart bounding in his chest as someone in the shadows said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  It was Orlando and he had an M4 pointed right at Stu. The ugly smile he wore made it seem as though he relished the idea of pulling the trigger.

  Chapter 12

  Jillybean had her own plan worked out seconds after the three left. Unfortunately, she had hours to kill before she could escape. It would not do to go out too early, that was so obvious even Eve agreed.

  When the time comes, let me do it, she whispered from out of the murk. You’re always too nice. If you don’t hit him hard enough he won’t stay down.

  Jillybean had taken only two Zyprexa and even that small of dose had her feeling sick. She didn’t dare take more or it would be a coin flip whether her heart or her liver gave out first.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Sadie said, speaking through Jillybean’s lips. “She’s a hateful thing. But if you want, I could get us out of here. I could get us over that fence in a blink.”

  Jillybean shook her head, feeling the things hidden within her great mass of hair jiggle. They wouldn’t be needed. They had allowed her to keep her belt. It was a rather plain brown belt made of cotton and in the inner lining she’d sewn a razor blade, a common set of handcuff keys and a homemade lock pick kit. It had been years since someone had the temerity to try to imprison her, but old habits died hard.

  “No. I’ll do it, but it’s not yet time.” But it was time to slip out of the cuffs. She worked a thumbnail along the inner part of her belt, feeling the key and the threads holding it in place. Back and forth went her thumb, separating the fibers until the metal began to wiggle.

  It was done in five minutes. Quietly, she set the cuffs down next to the support beam. When she stood her bones cracked and the cartilage popped, loudly. It was no great sound and the guard didn’t even stir. Gently, softly, Jillybean ghosted around the shed. It was a laughable place to hold a prisoner: tools stacked all around, pipes to be used as clubs, paint thinners, ready to be ignited.

  She picked out a few items, making sure to keep her lips sealed in the process. The guard had heard her talking to herself, that was a certainty, but he had only heard her from the one spot. It would be an easy giveaway if she began carrying on a conversation from one end of the shed to the other.

  Besides there wasn’t much to say. Sadie wasn’t great for plans, while all of Eve’s plans had murder at their cores. For instance, she was overly fond of the idea of using the turpentine. She kept forcing an image into Jillybean’s head: her pouring the liquid under the door where it would run down under the guard’s chair. As sleepy as he was he probably wouldn’t know it was there until Eve struck a spark to it and roasted him alive.

  “No,” Jillybean hissed in a whisper.

  Better, quieter ideas had already sprung up. She hefted a length of pipe four feet long. It was the right weight but the wrong length; it would catch the ceiling in an over-head attack. Putting it aside, she chose a shorter one. It would require more arm strength and that was a tricky thing. Too much and she could kill the guard. Too little and he could turn on her. Even a man knocked on the head and half-blind was more of a physical match for Jillybean.

  She would need something else to give her an edge and she found it using a spool of wire and a saw.

  This will never work, Eve complained.

  “Just ignore her,” Sadie said. “She’s being her usual bitchy self. I think this will work like a charm. It kind of reminds me of when you escaped from the River King. Ha! The way you disappeared right under his nose. I wish I could have seen his face.”

  “Not so loud now,” Jillybean warned as she rigged the noose and the tripwire. Everything would have to be just right for her plan to work. The guard would have to step exactly where she wanted. Of course, she could manipulate things to make this happen. With great perseverance, she inched a lawnmower to one side of the main post, and then set a stack of rakes leaning along the wall across from it. Three inches off the ground she set a double length of wire—a perfect tripwire. Five feet in the air she hung the noose; a wide circle that would close in a flash.

  The saw was hung from the rafters so that its teeth would scrape on what looked like a barbecue smoker. She tied a length of the wire to the handle and ran it back to the pole where she settled herself down, the pipe hidden behind her.

  She was ready to go and settled back down for a long wait. Closing her eyes, she slipped into a deeply meditative state. The hours seemed to go by in a snap and before she knew it, it was time. She commenced by pulling the wire attached to the saw. It let out a soft, almost purring rasp. As she could barely hear it, she judged it to be too soft by far and pulled harder. Presently there came a much louder scratching noise. It was less of a purr and more like the noise a guilty person might make when trying to escape.

  Dango had wooden ears, however and Jillybean was forced to grate the teeth of the saw even harder. It grated on her soul as well, and she found herself sneering and thinking about the longer pipe and the turpentine—and fire.

  “Stop,” Jillybean whispered, and gave the wire an extra hard pull; there was a scrape and a thump, which finally roused Dango.

  “What is that? What? I have a gun.”’ All of this came in a frightened hiss as he peered around the side of the shed, trying to make out what had made the sinister sound. He was so afraid of being attacked that he took a wide, wide route, around the building, the gun growing slick with his sweat.

  With his heart going like mad and his breath blowing in and out, he was not quiet and Jillybean tracked him right around the shed. Waiting until he was nearly back where he started, she pulled the wire again. She did so with an evil grin. The darkness inside of her was nearly as bad as the darkness outside of her.

  The pull was too hard by half and the rasping sound was terribly blatant in Jillybean’s half of her mind. It practically screamed Come in, there’s a trap, waiting!

  Despite this, Dango was taken in. He fumbled at the lock, trying to catch Jillybean in the very act of escape. The keyhole seemed to have shrunk and it took four tries to open the lock, giving Jillybean enough time to set herself to rights and to prepare for her performance.

  Just as the door was about to open she gave the saw a final jerk. Back and forth it went, the sound drawing Dango’s attention. He pointed his gun at the gloom-covered corner.

  “Who is that?” he demanded.

  “There’s no one here,” Jillybean said, giving the corner a guilty look. The saw, with the last of its momentum, sighed gently across the smoker. “It’s nothing,” Jillybean added, quickly as Dango took a step towards the corner, the noose and the double tripwire.

  He didn’t even notice the one path before him
had been artfully arranged. There was only one place to step and suddenly he was falling and in the next, he was caught up by the wire noose which cut deep, choking off his windpipe. The strangled sound he made, adding to the clatter of his rifle falling, made Jillybean’s heart flutter in fear and horrible delight.

  As she stood, taking up the pipe, her mind was scattered. Eve wanted to crush his head and at the same time let him strangle to death; Sadie wanted to run before he found his feet and discovered the way free of his trap; she knew she could be halfway to the harbor in two minutes.

  Jillybean wanted to smack Dango hard and firm with the pipe, lay him down gently and get that accursed wire from about his throat. She thought she was in control when she raised the pipe, but as she swung it she felt a gleeful burst of strength surge through her arm. At the last moment she tried to check the swing and managed to do so, in part.

  Still there was heavy crack as the pipe struck. Dango went right over, the wire cutting even deeper. Blood flowed and she stared and stared as it came quick and almighty dark. Somewhere along her periphery she saw hands, small supple hands releasing the knot.

  Dango collapsed and then those same hands hauled him over and wormed their way beneath the slick wire. They were her hands. “Jillybean’s,” she said, trying to right her mind. Her hands were a good deal more intelligent than her head just then and she was able to stop the bleeding with pressure.

  “He’s alive,” Sadie said. “I’d get the cuffs on him pretty quickly. There you go. What do you think? Which is worse, the bonk or the cut?”

  “His neck will heal just fine. The cut was long but shallow. His head, however,” Jillybean paused, feeling the man’s skull and the mighty big lump that was forming. A lump was better than a depression.

  “You hit him too hard, Eve,” Sadie snapped. “You could’ve killed him and that would’ve been murder.”

  Eve sulked and only muttered in what sounded to Jillybean’s ears very much like a foreign language.

  Jillybean searched Dango, taking his gun, keys, lighter and a long hunting knife that had a wicked edge. From there, despite the danger and her slightly unhinged mental state, she went straight away to the clubhouse. It was locked, but it was an agreeable lock and it took only minutes to turn the tumblers with the small pieces of metal from her belt. Once inside she went to the clinic.

  One Shot was still on the gurney. He had one arm in the air and the other curled at his chest. Rigor mortis had set in. It made her hesitate. She could operate on people and on the undead, but touching the actual dead sort of creeped her out.

  Their cold flesh always sent a chill down her back, and when they stared at her with blank fish eyes she couldn’t meet their sad gaze. She especially disliked it when they were stiff. For some reason she couldn’t put her finger on, they seemed more dead when they were stiff, as if there was something fundamentally inhuman about a stiff corpse. Then again, a pliable corpse that spilled everywhere as if it was nothing but a bag of jelly made her gag.

  Maybe the explanation could be found in the circumstances surrounding how her mother had died. Jillybean, at the age of six, all alone and terrified out of her wits, had the rare opportunity to watch her mother waste away for weeks on end in a catatonic state. Even before she died, her mother had been as cadaver-like as a person could be: the unseeing eyes, the stiffness, the insane silence that pervaded her room.

  When she died, Jillybean watched as her corpse twisted itself into a pretzel. She got to see her mother’s face contort and hear her teeth crack and she got to take in the harsh aroma as her bowels let go.

  Jillybean’s mental state had been a fragile, brittle thing since the beginning of the apocalypse, but that endlessly lonely winter with a living corpse as her only companion had caused cracks to develop that would eventually become a full-on mental breakdown—thus the voices in her head and the darkness that would sweep over her, especially in times of stress.

  Seeing One Shot brought that darkness swirling around the upper reaches of her mind. It threatened to eclipse her.

  “Not yet,” she whispered. Taking a deep breath, she swallowed her fear and approached the body with a lit candle in her hand. Despite her great spread of knowledge concerning human anatomy and physiology, she was not particularly well versed in autopsies.

  In this case, the cause of death should have been obvious. Holding the candle at an angle, she let the hot wax dribble into a pool on One Shot’s chest. She then planted the base of the candle in it so she could use both hands.

  Using a corpse as a candle holder, nice.

  In the corner of the room there was a shadow among the shadows. Jillybean refused to look in its direction. Keeping her head perfectly fixed, she went to the sink where her still-bloody surgical tools were collected in a steel tangle. She took a scalpel from the pile and approached the body, thinking that at any second One Shot would turn his head and stare at her, and perhaps accuse her of murder.

  He did not accuse her of anything, but the thing in the corner did. You shot him like a dog, it whispered.

  “He was a dog,” Jillybean answered. “Sorry,” she added, speaking to One Shot. Thankfully, the corpse didn’t reply.

  You shot him in cold blood, the voice in the shadows said, just as she cut into the body. Blood, chilled to room temperature, spilled out onto her bare hand. She pulled away, the point of the blade jittering.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t a lot of blood. In fact, there wasn’t near enough blood in his abdominal cavity to have killed him which was a load off her mind. She hadn’t missed a nick and the sutures were all sound. To be sure, she went through the loops, holding them up to the candle. The very act helped to stabilize her mind and the shadow retreated.

  When she was done, she wiped her hands on the sheet and leaned over the corpse, wishing she had a centrifuge handy. In ten minutes, she’d be able to discover whether or not One Shot had an elevated white blood count, the easiest way to check for infection.

  “Could I make a centrifuge?” Yes. The concept behind a centrifuge was simple enough: a centrifuge spins generating forces that cause denser elements to separate from the lighter ones. Unfortunately, the small centrifuges used for separating the components of blood spun at 20,000 rotations per minute, which was not something she could duplicate overnight.

  “So that’s out.” The only other way to check for infection was to take the liver’s temperature. It turned out to be twenty-one degrees Celsius, a fine temperature if One Shot had died at exactly one in the afternoon without a fever. “But the last time he was seen alive was at ten.” Infection couldn’t be ruled out, but she highly doubted it as a cause of death.

  She had shot him not even two days before. No one developed a life-threatening infection in so short a time.

  Patting his chest lightly, she asked the empty room, “So that leaves what? There’s no evidence of trauma. None of strangulation or choking or even poison.” One Shot looked as if he had just died. Just slipped away.

  You know he didn’t or you wouldn’t still be here. The voice was back, stating the obvious. You know where to look for the murder weapon.

  Jillybean’s eyes shifted to the trash can, knowing what she would find there. On top were the bloody rags Jenn had used during the surgery. What she was looking for would be found under all that. People always wanted to hide their sins.

  “They want to hide who they really are,” Jillybean said, though she didn’t remember thinking anything close to that. Pulling back the rags, she found the syringe…uncapped. She never left a syringe uncapped, and nor had she tossed one away during surgery.

  “So we know who did this,” she heard someone say in something of a distant manner, as if she were hearing the words come from down a dark hall. There was no reason to ask who, as suddenly Colleen White’s pretty, smiling face suddenly blinked into her mind.

  “Colleen? Really? Please. Hair and boys, that’s all she cares about. And we both know that killing someone takes more guts that pe
ople realize. She didn’t do it.” Another picture flashed into her head: Colleen lying in a pool of blood. In the dark the pool was black as tar.

  “It could’ve been anyone…”

  Chapter 13

  A lust for killing had brought Eve back to the surface and she aimed to get it as quickly as possible before one of Jillybean’s friends found her and tried to send her back down into the wretched darkness. The only problem: Eve had no notion where Colleen lived.

  With the night being full and deep, the apartment complex looked much bigger than it really was, and she wandered around until she heard voices talking in a quiet tone.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked the one.

  A pause. “It’s no concern of yours,” said the other. She knew that voice. It was a man’s voice. Yes, both speakers were men, but there was something quiet and strong in the second one and it stirred something inside of her. A memory pushed aside the grating hate. She saw herself going up on tiptoes to kiss the man. This brought on more stirrings and she remembered quite clearly seeing him laying back in a bed—completely naked.

  The image caught in her head and had the odd effect of paralyzing her as she soaked it in.

  “It is my concern,” the first voice—Orlando Otis—said. “There’s a curfew on. It means no one’s allowed out tonight.”

  “Then shouldn’t I be in my own bed?” After his initial hesitation Stu recaptured his usual courage and walked right past Orlando as if he were holding a stick instead of a rifle. Orlando began to splutter and wave the gun, but Stu knew he wouldn’t dare shoot him in the back.

  Stu walked past him and down a rut that cut along the edge of the little plots and gardens. Something in the shadows of the building caught his eye and as he turned he saw Jillybean standing like a statue. Nothing could have surprised him more and instead of continuing on as he should have, he jerked to a stop, his head cranked to the side, a look of shock on his handsome face.