The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  Stu put a steady, strong hand on her shoulder. “Keep watch, just in case.” That hand had been real and so was the crinkling around his eyes that told her he was smiling.

  “Certainly,” she replied. She was sure that her weak smile hidden under her shirt didn’t reach her eyes. That would have taken more effort than she could muster. Although she hadn’t taken any pills that morning, fixing Jenn had worn her out.

  As Stu and Mike maneuvered the Saber down to the harbor, Jillybean watched in a careless manner, not expecting a zombie in this maelstrom of fire and smoke. In fact, she left after a couple of minutes and ducked into the remains of a Quickie Mart.

  There were few places she had been to that were as utterly trashed as this. Amid sunglasses, magazines and road maps, she found a small bottle of Motrin. Pocketing it, she walked down to the harbor and discovered that she hadn’t even been missed as she climbed up to join Stu and Mike on deck.

  “We should hold off putting her in the water for as long as possible,” Mike was saying with a look of worry on his face, or the part of his face not covered by a shirt he had wrapped around his head. Above the edge of it, his eyes were bright green and afraid for both his ship and for Jenn. If the glue wasn’t completely set the hull would open like a flower and how on earth would Jenn get to shore? With both the Saber and Jenn so fragile, he couldn’t chance putting to sea just yet.

  He got the Saber as close as he could, stopping the trailer at the high tide mark, with only a spindly rope holding them back. One slice of the knife would send them rolling into the water.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Stu said, his voice muffled by the shirt he wore over his face. “Jillybean, is there some way to keep the smoke from getting into the cabin. I’m with Mike. I want to hold off putting out for as long as possible.” He gestured to what little could be seen of the bay. The wind seemed confused which way to go, spinning the smoke and making the water choppy. “I don’t want to go out in that any sooner than…” He froze, his dark eyes squinting over the rail.

  Someone was coming towards them. It was only an indistinct figure in the drifting ash and the grey haze, but one thing was obvious, it wasn’t one of the dead. No, this wasn’t some huge creature, this was man-sized. Stu and Mike both unslung M4s while Jillybean looked down at herself. Besides the ratty black clothing she had worn off and on since leaving Bainbridge, she possessed nothing.

  She stepped back as Stu said in a carrying whisper, “Who is that?” The figure said nothing, it only started hurrying forward even quicker. “We are armed but we don’t want any trouble. Stop. I will shoot.”

  He didn’t shoot even though the person came right up to the trailer. Up close they saw it wasn’t a person at all. It had been a Corsair. Now, it was a zombie and barely one at that. It had been fed on by the real monsters. Great hunks of flesh and muscle had been ripped away from its legs and arms. Its stomach had been excavated and its chest had been gnawed down to the bone. There was so little of it left that it wasn’t much more than a walking skeleton.

  How it retained enough of itself to be brought back, Jillybean couldn’t fathom. “Don’t shoot it. Don’t waste the ammo.” They were safe, high up on the boat. The thing went round and round, scraping at the sides uselessly.

  “We should kill it,” Mike said, grinning suddenly and looking his age for the first time in days. “What if one of us has to use the bathroom. I guess Stu and I can pee on it, but what are you and Jenn going to do?”

  “And I suppose I do have to go back to the garage,” Jillybean said. “Okay kill it, just don’t shoot it. There were some chunks of concrete. I think it used to be a sidewalk. Use that to bash its head in.”

  We could do it, Eve whispered, eagerly. It’s been a long time since we got to have any fun like that.

  Jillybean regularly shot and stabbed her zombie patients. It wasn’t her idea of fun. “No,” she said, under her breath.

  Eve rose up inside of her, an angry toddler throwing a violent temper tantrum. Let me kill it! The scream shook Jillybean and in her weakened state, her already unsteady legs gave out under her and she would’ve fallen off the boat if it hadn’t been for Stu catching her as she fell in his arms.

  For a moment she dangled above the creature with Stu’s strong hand around her middle. The monster, if it could be called such, had no lower jaw and only a stump of a black tongue. It made pitiful mewling sounds as it tried to get at her. Far from being frightened of it, Jillybean was only saddened by it.

  She hung limp as Stu didn’t pull her up right away. He had a good hold of her and was plenty strong to hold her like that for some time. “What are you waiting for, Mike? This is the best distraction you’re likely to get.”

  Swift and sure as a monkey, Mike scampered down onto the trailer before dropping with a thud onto the sand. A heavy rock, one the size of his own head, sat half-humped out of the sand. He pried it the rest of the way out, came up behind the zombie and caved in its head. What came pouring out made him shudder and he felt his gorge rise.

  Stu pulled her back but didn’t let go and for once that morning, Jillybean felt alone in her head. She didn’t want to leave him but Mike was coming back from dragging the body away.

  “I should, uh do something about the, uh, smoke,” she said, pulling away.

  He watched her go, muttering to herself and weaving slightly, reaching out to cars and buildings partially to hold her upright and partially to assure herself that the world around her was real or so it seemed to Stu. He was worried for her and followed along after, slipping through the banks of smoke.

  She made her way back to where they had hidden the Saber and, as Stu watched, she made their smoke problems disappear with only a thought. Hanging on the wall were six or seven masks used by auto body specialists when spray painting a car. Each had round filters protruding downward. Putting one on, she tightened it and took a deep breath.

  It had been as simple as that. Any of them could have thought of the masks, but no one had.

  The masks were more comfortable than Stu would have thought. Their only downside was that they hadn’t been designed with a five-alarm forest fire in mind. Their filters had to be changed out frequently, still the masks allowed the four of them to remain on shore for another four hours.

  At that point, the fire jumped the four-lane highway that separated most of the town from the harbor. An entire platoon of towering Fremont cottonwoods that had been leaning over the highway for years finally came down with a roar that could be heard three hundred yards away in the Saber. The old dead grass went up first, igniting overgrown bushes and trees and finally houses and businesses.

  The four of them, lying languidly with sweat streaming into pools at the notches of their throats, waited as long as they could. Every thirty minutes, Mike summoned the energy to go out into that hateful world to wet the sails and the deck, afraid of what he called “spontaneous combustion.” Jillybean was too exhausted to explain that spontaneous combustion was an altogether different and unproven phenomenon.

  When he came the last time after only thirty seconds, Jillybean knew it was time to go. “It’s bad,” he said.

  Jenn stayed behind as the three went on deck. She missed catching a glimpse of hell. The world Stu had known for the last five years, from the Marin headlands to Mill Valley was engulfed in flame and that flame seemed to be pressing down on them like a mountain of fire. The flames stretched across the rim of the harbor and within the fire were explosions and mini-tornadoes.

  The savage heat was too much for Jillybean who was driven back down. Stu with his face turning a bright cherry red, braved the heat and cut the line holding the trailer in place. It trundled into the water with a hiss. All of the exposed metal aboard the ship was too hot to touch and for a few minutes the Saber spun gently out of control.

  Unfortunately, the fire was affecting the wind patterns within the harbor. To feed the immense inferno, air was being sucked in towards it and the Saber was being sucked in
as well. Before Mike could even get the boom around they had grounded again. He tried to go to the bow but the heat felt as though it were peeling the skin from his face and when he ducked behind an arm he thought his hair was going to burst into flame.

  Again, it was Jillybean who did what should have been obvious. She had gone back below to fetch blankets, which she soaked with sea water. Setting one over her head she was able to go forward to Mike and Stu, who were yelling back and forth, their eyes at squints and their faces screwed up against the pain. Once covered, the two were able to shove them off the rocks. This time the boom was ready and making only a whisper against the tumultuous back drop, they cut a line through the choppy water and out into the bay.

  The chaotic wind close-in made Mike think the same would continue further out into the bay, but after a mile they were practically becalmed with only a gentle one-knot breath coaxing them along. All around them clouds of smoke hung low over the green water, sometimes softly running across its gently lapping waves and sometimes lifting completely so they were dazzled by the early afternoon sun.

  Pale and teetering, Jenn came onto the deck, keeping her hands to herself. There was a film of ash coating every inch of it. Mike and Stu were coated as well and resembled the little zombie they had run across earlier.

  “So, what do we do now?” she asked.

  That was the question on all of their minds. There was no going back even if they wanted to. And there would be no going to Alcatraz, either, except to turn over the Saber, which Mike was still determined to do. Jenn and Stu were more reluctant but knew it was the right thing. Even though it meant not going home to Bainbridge, Jillybean also agreed.

  “We could winter in Stockton,” Mike said. “We went scavenging there a few months back and there are a few places we could fortify. I bet Gerry the Greek would give us a lift. Once he sees the Saber that is.” He rubbed away some of the dust from the railing and sighed.

  A winter in Stockton did not appeal to any of them. Then again, it would be a desperately tough winter no matter which way they turned. They were on their own with about four days’ worth of food and sixty-one rounds of ammo for the three M4s. Their prospects were dismal. Survival was about the only thing they could hope for.

  They were all quiet when Jenn glanced up. The clouds of dense smoke parted long enough for her to catch sight of a V-shaped formation of geese, winging their way northeast. They were going the wrong direction perhaps confused by the fire.

  “I know where we should go,” she said, as relief flooded her. The birds were a sign. They had even pointed like an arrow where to go.

  Stu looked up just as the smoke swept over them again. “Where?” he demanded. “You’re not going to tell us you saw a sign or something.”

  “I did. We’re going to Sacramento,” she announced.

  “But they’re all diseased there,” Mike said, remembering the ghastly stench of the warehouse and the sad children with their bowed legs, scuttling around like crabs. Death hung like a shadow over the community and he would rather fight a zombie barehanded than go back.

  “Exactly,” Jenn agreed, “and Jillybean is going to fix them.”

  Chapter 17

  Eve was instantly aware, her bitter, dark mind blotting out Jillybean’s. “And why would she want to go anywhere near a bunch of disgusting diseased people? I don’t care what they have, the answer is no. It isn’t going to happen.” Her shrill tone was so superior, so haughty that it seemed strange coming from Jillybean soft lips.

  Jenn would not be deterred. She had seen the sign plain as day which meant they had to go. They really didn’t have a choice in the matter unless they wanted to court the worst luck ever. To be given a sign and then ignore it would be a huge mistake, one they couldn’t afford to make. “It’ll be okay, I know it. Jillybean will fix them or cure them or whatever, and then from there, who knows? Maybe they’ll make her the leader or something. Or maybe they’ll give her, like a bunch of bullets as thanks. It’ll be a start for us. What do you guys think?”

  Although Mike was Jenn’s biggest supporter when it came to her ability to read signs, he was secretly on Eve’s side on this one. If it had been anyone else making the suggestion, he would have been dead set against it and yet even he couldn’t commit to Jenn, beyond a shrug and brief, lukewarm smile. He turned quickly to Stu hoping that he would stomp the entire idea with one of his patented gruff responses.

  Instead, he asked Jillybean, “Can you cure diseases?”

  “Tell him, no,” Eve ordered from Jillybean’s lips.

  Jillybean felt her mind suddenly thrust forward again. Feeling slightly dizzy and pretty sure she had missed something, she asked, “No to what? Going to Sacramento?”

  Stu took her hands in his and fixed her with his dark eyes. In her bewildered and sickly state, they had a hypnotic quality to them that was calming. They blotted out the smoke and the nails-on-the-chalkboard feel of Eve inside her.

  When her blue and yellow eyes softened, he asked, “Can you cure diseases? Is that even a possibility?”

  “It depends on the disease. Do you know what they have?”

  As always, Stu was too slow to answer for Jenn, who piped up, “TB, that’s what they said. They tried antibiotics only they didn’t work. Do you think it was because they might have gone bad?”

  “I think we shouldn’t accept a diagnosis from a patient at face value. But if it is tuberculosis we may want to listen to Eve on this one. TB is very hard to get rid of. Under optimal circumstances and with the right antibiotics it can take anywhere from six to nine months to treat properly.”

  This drained the enthusiasm out of Jenn. “Nine months? And you don’t have any of your antibiotics either way.” She looked back up at the smoke swirling overhead wondering if she had read the sign correctly. Nothing else made sense, however. “What if they’re wrong? What if it’s not TB? What if it’s something else? Could you cure it faster?”

  “Not unless it’s something very simple. Can you tell me their symptoms, again?” Jenn, with Mike throwing in a few adjectives and many squeamish looks, described the sickening smell of diarrhea that permeated the air, the deep sunken eyes of the people, the blue tinge to their lips and their strangely wrinkled hands.

  “Classic symptoms of cholera,” Jillybean said, remembering she knew this already.

  “Is that the plague?” Mike asked. He had heard of the “plague” although he wasn’t exactly sure what it did to a person. All he knew was that it was worse than TB.

  Jillybean laughed gently, but not in a mean way. “No cholera comes from drinking water contaminated with the bacteria Vibrio Cholerae. It’s most likely because there is human feces in their water supply.”

  “Feces?” Mike asked, his lips pulled way down. “As in poop? Oh, gaw. That’s gross. Maybe we shouldn’t go. I mean, I’m not gonna drink the water there and we have to drink. You can’t fix the water, can you?” They all stared at her; Mike anxiously, hoping she would say no; Jenn thoughtfully, wondering how this news went with her vision; and Stu, impassively, his thoughts hidden behind his dark eyes.

  Jillybean saw all this as did the shadow of Eve who was picturing herself as queen of these Sacramento freaks—assuming Jillybean could fix them and their water problems she would demand to be made queen as payment. Being queen suited Eve.

  “Only time and proper management will fix their water issues,” Jillybean said. “As for the cholera, we’re going to need a lot of supplies, as much as she can handle.” She patted the filthy deck of the Saber. Mike began to protest so she said, “We need her for just a bit longer.”

  She had Mike steer for the closest hospital which happened to be directly across the bay in northern Oakland. It was a slow trip with only a cold, near insubstantial wind pushing them along. Slowly they passed the oddly named, Treasure Island, which sat in the bay halfway between Alcatraz and Oakland.

  It seemed to take forever for them to slip past the flat island. Still, it gave them time
to clean the boat from stem to stern. Then they lounged on deck, wrapped in blankets, as a tired melancholy sensation stole over them. Jillybean was still feeling the effects of her liver damage and slept with her head in Stu’s lap until they reached the far side of the bay two hours later.

  With only a whisper and the smallest thump, Mike slid them in next to one of the few remaining piers that was still standing.

  Stu woke Jillybean with a smile. “We’re here. I’m going to need a list.” She started to tell him that she could remember everything, but he cut her off. “You’re not going with us. Your problems get worse with stress. So, I want you to just relax right here. We’ll get everything you need.”

  “Relax?” she asked, as if the word was new to her. “But there’s so much stuff I need and you may not be able to…”

  “Just write it all down, but make sure it’s, uh, legible.” This time his smile was a little off. Jillybean guessed that when he said legible he meant for her to use small words.

  The list was much longer than Stu had expected. He read down it to make sure he understood each item. “Isn’t this surgery stuff? And what’s with the equal signs?”

  “Some items may be found under different names. Here, normal saline is the same as sodium chloride .09%, and that’s the same as NaCl .09%. And the surgical items are just in case. We never know what we might find…”

  “No surgery!” Eve suddenly barked, the words jumping right out of Jillybean’s mouth. “You know there’s no time.”

  “No time for what?” Stu asked.

  Eve turned Jillybean’s features cagey. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Oh, I bet you would, but too bad for…”

  Jillybean turned quickly away and hushed her into silence. “Okay, no surgery,” she hissed under her breath. Straightening she wore an embarrassed smile as she said to Stu, “Forget the surgical tools, please get everything else, though.”