The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  Although she didn’t understand most of that, potatoes sounded like simple medicine and Jenn liked simple when she could get it. “Let’s do that.”

  “And if you’re wrong?” Jillybean asked, stepping close, her eyes boring into Jenn’s. “You’re making a life and death decision here.” This undid Jenn who now wanted to take back her answer. In fact, she didn’t want to answer one way or another and this disappointed Jillybean. “On one hand what we do may kill her and it’ll be on our heads. On the other, doing nothing will definitely kill her.”

  “Then, I guess, we do something?” Jenn replied, wishing this was all on someone else.

  Jillybean immediately grinned, clapped her hands and began issuing orders. She sent Stu to get the potatoes and Jenn to get her med bag. They left together, but despite the urgency, Stu stopped her and pointed at the smoke from the fire Jillybean had set.

  “What do you think about that?” he asked, his face kept carefully neutral.

  It was the last question she had expected from him. Her head was already spinning, she turned and saw the smoke was now so close that it hung over the river…over Mike who was standing on one of the containers, gold glinting in his blond hair as he gave directions to his team. The juxtaposition she had noted before was so much more obvious that her arms broke out in goosebumps.

  “What do you see?” Stu asked, taking her arm in a hard grip, bending over her, his dark eyes drilled into her own, searching for his own answer.

  She pulled away, her stomach thrilling in fear. “I don’t see anything. Nothing, okay?”

  “It’s not okay. Tell me what you saw, damn it!”

  He had turned savage and the grip on her arm was intense. She yanked her arm away. “Danger, okay? It’s almost on us. Anyone can see that. But before I saw…I saw…” She trailed off remembering the cloud of crows. It had been a storm of crows. But this was different. This was danger and light, so close to each other that they were now almost interlocking. She didn’t really know what it meant.

  “I’ll tell you what it means,” Stu said, his anger gone, replaced by a certainty of death. “It means that Jillybean wants us to fight the Corsairs. She told me that was her plan. And we can’t do that Jenn. We’ll never win. It’ll be suicide.”

  The crows of her imagination roared through her head and she nodded.

  “You have to stop her. You have to change her mind. I tried and Mike doesn’t stand a chance. It has to be you.”

  Chapter 32

  Ten minutes later Stu had to give Jenn a push to get her to go back into the warehouse. He didn’t want them entering at the same time and it made sense that she went first since the medbag had been in the Saber, while the potatoes, sad little things with gnarly reaching roots were buried in the hardest to access container.

  “Here you go,” she said to Jillybean as she hurried up.

  Jillybean glanced up and within a second she remarked, “He talked to you, didn’t he?”

  The two were friends but the chill that came down between them was like a curtain. “Yes.” She hoped the simple answer would suffice, however Jillybean looked up from the bag with raised eyebrows which for her was equal to a direct question. “He told me and he told me to look for signs but I already saw one and it was bad.”

  A smile from Jillybean and the smallest laugh before she reached into her medbag. “And did this sign show you what would happen if I don’t act?”

  “No, but I don’t think they work that way,” Jenn admitted. She really didn’t know how the signs acted and she wasn’t even sure what she had actually seen or how any of it connected.

  “That’s the nice thing about science,” Jillybean remarked, turning casually analytical the second she found a nasogastric tube. “Everything is very much cut and dried. Take Miss Rebecca for instance. She can’t hold down anything which meant she has a marked electrolyte imbalance which was only exacerbated by the IV. Every liter that went through her drew out more and more potassium which is vital to maintain a regular heartbeat.”

  She paused as she hefted Rebecca up into a sitting position with her back against one of the racks. She then slipped the tube up the woman’s right nostril. To Jenn’s amazement, Jillybean kept feeding more of the tube up and up and up until Jenn thought it would come sprouting out of the top of her head. As Jillybean was pushing the tube into Miss Rebecca’s nose, she listened with a stethoscope first at her lungs and then at her stomach. “30cc syringe,” she said, snapping her fingers and holding her hand out.

  Jenn dug one out and handed it to Jillybean who sent a bolus of air through the tube. She seemed satisfied and handed the stethoscope to Jenn, saying, “Fill the syringe and then push it through. You’ll hear a whoosh in her stomach.”

  “Her stomach? That looked like it went into her brain.”

  Jillybean laughed easily. “No. Have you ever snorted a good hunk of snot into your brain? No, of course not. The tube followed the nasal passage which connects to the back of the throat. It’s right there where we might have problems, especially in an unconscious person. If you’re not careful the tube will go down into the lungs.”

  She had Jenn listen to the sound of the whoosh again. “If you don’t hear that, it means you’re in the lungs and you have to start over. Now where is Stu?”

  Their earlier conversation seemed to have been completely forgotten and when Stu arrived a minute late with a steel pot of mushed potatoes he didn’t allude to it either. He set the pot down and stared hard at the two women, looking for some clue in their faces.

  “That’s not quite the right consistency,” Jillybean said, dipping a finger into the pot. “Make it as soft as possible. Put some muscle into it.” He had a potato masher with him and presently he was mashing as hard as he could, looking as though he were taking his frustrations out on the potatoes.

  The only sounds were his grunts, some of which sounded like curses. Jillybean said nothing for a few minutes. She remained placidly sitting next to Rebecca while the tension built up. Finally she said, “Now add water and keep mushing. Miss Rebecca will thank you for your efforts.”

  Not if I save her in time to be killed by the Corsairs, Stu thought to himself as he savagely went at the potatoes.

  It wasn’t long before the consistency met Jillybean’s approval. “We’ll give her sixteen ounces now and then another eight ounces in a half an hour and go from there.” She showed Jenn how to use the feeding tube and once half of the potato slop was down, she and Stu left in an icy silence.

  Jenn fed the goop down into Rebecca and then waited for some miracle. There was nothing flashy about the potato mixture but somehow, her heart arrhythmia slowly corrected itself. It took so long that Jenn actually fell asleep after giving her the second of the two doses.

  A crick in her neck woke her, and in the falling light she saw Miss Rebecca gazing at her. “Hi,” Jenn said, sitting up and massaging her neck. The pot of potatoes was nearly gone, meaning Jillybean had come by occasionally to feed the woman her gruel.

  “The Queen says she’s taking all of us invalids,” Miss Rebecca murmured, jutting her chin toward the others. There were only ten of them left, the sickest ten. Jenn supposed invalids meant that they were the sickest.

  “Good,” she answered with forced conviction and an equally forced smile.

  Miss Rebecca also smiled and it almost seemed her jaw creaked as if she hadn’t worked her smile muscles in years. “It is good. It is very good. Everyone is glad to be quit of this place.”

  “There’s danger ahead,” Jenn said, watching her closely.

  The smile widened, showing off small gaps in her teeth. “There’s danger all around us. It’s why we never left this place even though year after year it got worse and worse. No, we aren’t gonna be scared off now that the Queen has put us in motion. She got us over our, uh what’s the word? Inertia? And now that she’s got us inertialized or energized or what not, we aren’t gonna be scared off by no danger, big or small.”

 
This was presiding feeling of everyone Jenn ran into. The ten invalids—her new word of the day—were eager to get on board the barge, more afraid to be left behind than any future danger. The ordinary people, exhausted from sickness and their day-long labors were already claiming spots in the containers.

  Jenn was surprised to see that within the containers were tables. “To increase surface area,” Mike explained. “Everyone gets three feet of room, width-wise. Without the tables that’s comes out to only six people per container, but with the tables we can double that to twelve. Light people sleep on top, heavy people on the bottom.”

  “That’s pretty smart.”

  The wind cutting around the edges of the containers made a soft incessant flurry of her hair and he had to resist the urge to touch it. He stared for a few moments before he remembered he was in the middle of a conversation. Quite unnecessarily he said, “It was Jillybean’s idea. I said they’ll never fit with all their stuff and she said ‘get some tables,’ as if there were tables just sitting all over the place.”

  He looked like he was ready to go on for a while. Quickly, she asked, “Has Stu talked to you about what Jillybean has planned for us?”

  The rosy-cheeked smile he’d worn since seeing her dimmed. “Yeah. He tried to be all sneaky about it, but Jillybean caught him. She pretended not to be mad and I gotta say, pretending may be her worst thing. She didn’t yell or anything but boy you could see the steam coming out of her ears.”

  “So? What do you think? It’s crazy to go right?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not that crazy. I mean feel this.” He knocked the nearest container with his knuckles. “This barge isn’t exactly made of cardboard. We might be okay unless they try to board us. Then, yeah, we’re screwed.”

  His casual attitude was astonishing to her. “Did Stu tell you about the sign I saw?” It would’ve been difficult for him to do so since she hadn’t gone into even the slightest of descriptions. With the barge swarming with people loading box after box, she dragged him further down the long pier, explaining what she had seen in a low whisper.

  Mike apportioned to each of his friends complete respect in certain fields: Jillybean owned everything to do with intelligence, Stu was gritty determination and steel toughness and Jenn was the final word in the field of visions and the supernatural.

  “And you think we should stay?” he asked. “Here?” The idea galled him. Not only was the warehouse disgusting, he had the barge to think about. It was a boat of sorts and having it just sit at a pier was practically a sin. “Maybe we can find a different spot. I have a map of the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin. There could be some prime spots.”

  This was no answer to their problems. “If the barge can get there then the Corsairs can as well. I don’t know what to do. Things aren’t exactly straight forward.” She was reluctant to mention what she had seen earlier. The smoke was still above them, but in her mind it seemed to be above Mike mostly. Was that just her fear of losing him? Or…she was suddenly aware that he was waiting for her to explain, only she knew she couldn’t. Jillybean was right. She didn’t know what these signs meant beyond death and danger, and perhaps some sort of mixing of good and bad.

  Their time alone was up before she could think of anything to say. Jillybean called from the barge. “Mike! We need to consider an anchor.”

  “I gotta go,” he said and yet he didn’t scoot right off. Before she knew it, his lips were on hers, warm and soft. The kiss went on for a wonderfully long time.

  At first Jenn expected Jillybean to holler again. She could radiate impatience when the mood was on her as it seemed to be then. But as soon as Mike gave Jenn’s hand one last clasp, Jenn saw Mike was being drawn away, not for his expertise with anchors and the fundamentals of a capstan, which was a big spool used to drag the anchor up, but to keep him too busy to dwell on Jenn’s signs or Stu’s fears.

  She was sure that she would be put to work as well and sure enough, Willis met her with a long, soul-weary sigh. “She says we need sheet metal now and more rope and when I told her there were a number of breweries around here she got all excited and said we have to have barley. Lots of it.”

  Jenn didn’t know what barley was, but suspected it fell into the category of busy work.

  Although her heart was running faster than normal and her hands were sweaty, it wouldn’t do start contradicting the queen now or sowing seeds of discord. She went along with Willis and four others and didn’t return until well after dark. By then the warehouse had been wholly abandoned and the entire population was aboard the barge. They were the last to board and when they did, Jillybean clapped her hands together once.

  “We should get moving,” she said.

  “Jillybean,” Stu growled. “You can’t be serious.”

  The Queen turned a hard eye on Stu and the two stared so long at each other that everyone around them grew uncomfortable. “Would you like to lead?” she asked.

  “I never said that,” he replied.

  “Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?” Eve had every time she opened her mouth, but Jillybean hadn’t. He shook his head, breaking eye contact. “Then get aboard the Saber and prepare to cast off. You too, Jenn. We’ll only be traveling about twenty miles tonight. The river narrows just after the Paintersville Bridge and I don’t feel comfortable chancing that in the dark.”

  While Jenn had been gone an anchor and a rotating capstan to raise and lower it had been added to the rear of the barge. It was the only independent control that the barge possessed and they didn’t even go a mile before the anchor had to be dropped.

  With ropes strung from the barge to the Saber, Mike sent her on a course that he assumed would take them straight down the middle of the river, however for reasons he could not fathom, the barge heeled heavily to starboard and dragged the relatively tiny Saber along with it.

  Desperately he tried to correct, aiming the bow of the Saber at the eastern bank. This changed the course of the barge, however, the wind died and before they knew it, they were being swept sideways downriver.

  Mike cursed as one of the ropes suddenly snapped. “Drop the anchor! Drop the anchor!” he cried, bringing the boom around and spinning the wheel, frantic to get out of the way of a hundred-ton hunk of metal the size of a building.

  He wanted to cut the last ropes, but to do so would mean giving up on the barge and perhaps losing it forever if it struck a submerged rock near the shallow bank. Its immense weight and momentum would tear a hole in its hull that would be impossible to patch without getting the boat out of the water—an utter impossibility.

  James Smith was at the anchor and had been expecting the cry. He dropped the anchor and waited with his heart in his throat and one hand on the chain. He could feel the edge digging at the river bottom, digging but not catching.

  It slowed them considerably and with the Saber hauling them around, their speed, which had never been greater than five miles an hour became a sluggish one and a half and finally they came to a stop altogether.

  Mike drew the Saber in, came aboard and immediately rushed back to the anchor chain. He didn’t like the hold it had on the bottom either. “We’ll need to keep a watch. If the barge begins to move, send up a cry.” Just in case he moved the Saber upstream, pointed her north and reattached the ropes.

  “It’s the best we can do,” he said, coming down into the hold where Jillybean was breaking out chemicals. She was going to make more batteries…on board. Mike felt a little sick at the sight of the acid. “Wouldn’t that be easier on the barge?”

  “Perhaps,” she admitted, “but I felt I should give you the opportunity to ask questions I would never answer in any other company.”

  Now that they were afforded this liberal opportunity, each suddenly felt the fear that had been growing inside of them, but none wanted to look afraid in front of the others. It made them shy, and they each waited for someone else to throw out the first question.

  When they hesitated too long she
decided to just start talking. “Up until two weeks ago the Hill People were just a rumor to the Corsairs. They’ve know about the people of Sacramento, and the Guardians and the Santas but you were too small a group to make much news. Now they know better. They’ve seen your little village and they know your numbers can’t be great.”

  She turned her gaze to Mike. “They also have a guess about Alcatraz. And before you ask, I know this because I have interviewed a number of the Corsairs over the last few years.”

  “Interviewed?” Stu asked, nervously.

  “Don’t get caught up in semantics. I asked questions and they answered, under duress. Leave it at that. The gist of these interviews is that the Corsairs have been growing in numbers. When they catch younger men they are given the choice between joining the Corsairs or being hung over a spit and roasted alive. Everyone joins.”

  Mike wanted to think he wouldn’t, or that he would run away at the first chance.

  As always Jillybean read his mind. “They have inducements against running that make being roasted alive seem like a good time. Almost no one runs, especially after the first few are caught.” She paused, looking both ill and happy—Eve was enjoying the conversation and the memories being dredged up.

  With an effort, Jillybean forced her back down. “I didn’t need visions to see they will be coming for revenge. It would’ve been the apartment complex first, then Alcatraz, and then Sacramento, when they found out how weak they are.”

  “So your idea is to go out to meet them in battle?” Mike asked in bewilderment. “Stu is right, we should run. The Saber is fast and the four of us could be in Mexico in a week.”

  Jillybean cocked her head in surprise. “You would run? I find that hard to believe. You wouldn’t want to warn your friends back on Alcatraz? And would you, Stu like to warn the people on the hilltop?”

  “I meant we should run after we warn them,” Mike countered.

  “A warning now won’t help. By my calculations we have three days at the most before the Corsairs show up. It’ll take us at least a day to get to San Francisco and another half day to convince your friends and for them to gather what they’ll need to survive the coming winter. This will give them a head start of only a day and a half. How far do you honestly think they’ll get?”