The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  “Jillybean and I will deal with Gerry,” he said. “Mike and Jenn will go back for the Floating Fortress. Take turns napping on the way. Mike, promise me. You know you can trust her on the bay when the wind’s like this.”

  Mike was sure he loved Jenn, but maybe not enough to trust her with sailing at night. Even then she was gazing up at the stars, checking to see if this was the best course of action. What if she had her mind on the signs when they tried to cross the remains of the Richmond Bridge?

  “I promise I’ll rest,” Mike swore, playing a semantic game.

  “See that he does,” Stu ordered.

  For her part, Jillybean wasn’t listening. The stress of imagining a battle in which the only outcome she could picture was death for half of them and enslavement for the rest, was making her twitchy.

  Stu was more worried about her than whether Mike got his beauty sleep. “Let’s get you dressed. I want you to wear the long coat and boots that you wore the other day.”

  She thought it dreadfully petty on her part that this cut through the black haze that had been creeping along the edges of her mind. “You liked that outfit?” she asked, throwing out a baited hook, fishing for a compliment.

  “You know I did. I stared so much and so often I almost let a zombie eat us, remember?”

  As she dressed, she grinned. Don’t get loosey-goosey on us, Sadie warned. Eve is counting on it. One mistake and she’ll be out. So lock it up until this is over. Bainbridge is counting on you.

  “Did you say something?” Stu asked from the main cabin.

  Jillybean bit her lip. “Nothing important,” she lied. She had nearly spilled the deepest secret she still held. It was one that would damn everything she had worked for. Forcing a smile into place she breezed out of the cabin she sometimes shared with Jenn. The Saber skipped over a wave as she did when she was picking up a good wake on her keel. Jillybean stumbled right into Stu’s arms, hoping he would forget what, if anything, he might have heard.

  “I got you,” he said, forgetting his own middle name somewhere in her embrace. She had added more than a dab of perfume to her neck and he was startled into throwing all decorum out the window. She was so close and smelled so wonderful that he couldn’t help breath her in, his nose and lips running along her neck, her jaw and then her lips until she blushed from her cheeks to the top of her breast bone.

  “Alcatraz, ho,” Mike called out in a soft voice, causing Stu to come close to cursing the boy’s terrible sense of timing.

  Jillybean took a steadying breath and then headed up leaving Stu who needed another minute to compose himself. By the time he did the island was only a hundred yards off.

  “Let them know we’re here,” Jillybean ordered, all trace of the vamp gone. With her black cloak flaring behind her and her hair flicking and waving as though it were made of flame, she was a queen once more and Stu suddenly felt small again.

  Mike turned into the wind, purposely letting the sails snap and flare in imitation of the Queen’s mane. He took her slowly right down the length of the island, parading her fine lines before the quickly waking Islanders. As they watched in envy, he spun up again in short zigzagging tacks, flared his sails wide and then came racing at the dock, making the guard in the tower squeal in fright.

  How he was able to do it, none of them knew but he spun the Saber almost on her bow, working the boom like a fencer’s sword and going in a complete circle before letting her drift side-on toward an empty spot on the dock.

  Under precise commands from Mike, Stu had been in charge of the main, while Jenn worked the jib and neither could have replicated the precise movements that had caused the boat to dance as though it commanded the current, the winds and the ebbing tide.

  They weren’t the only ones impressed. There had been the thunder of boots along the dock but as the boat came drifting perfectly in, twenty men and women stood speechless and in awe, the guns in their hands almost forgotten. The only person who did not even seem to notice the display was the Queen.

  She stood at the rail and stepped off just as Mike slipped a fender between the Saber and the dock. The fact that he had been kneeling made the move even more regal appearing and there were a number of “Ooohs,” whispered.

  “Who are you?” Gerry the Greek asked. He was equal parts nervous and impressed and it sounded in his voice. The assumption of everyone there was that they were Corsairs. It was a Corsair boat and had been expertly handled. This, coupled with her black attire and her haughty demeanor made it a safe guess.

  “I am Jillian Martin, Queen of Sacramento and of the Floating Fortress, and soon to be Queen of this bay and everyone in it.”

  Thankfully the dark hid Stu’s clenched teeth and Jenn’s look of surprise at the proclamation. Mike was confused. Hadn’t they just discussed her not attempting to make herself Queen of the Islanders?

  Jillybean didn’t think she had much of a choice except to play up her status as Queen. Without it, what did she have going for her? An undeniably accurate charge of insanity and a slightly less accurate charge of murder.

  “She’s a Corsair!” Gerry exclaimed to a great hissing whisper from the gathered Islanders.

  Jillybean waited for the noise to subside before she stated, “No, I’m not a Corsair. I’m here to save you from them. They should be here in a day or two.”

  Chapter 35

  “How do you know that?” Gerry asked. “Huh? As far as anyone knows, the Corsairs are far away bothering other people.”

  “I know they are heading here right this second because I know the Corsairs better than anyone. I know they are not going to let it be known that a handful of weaklings like the Hill People defeated them. They have gathered their full strength and they are coming for revenge.”

  The Islanders broke out in frightened whispers. “Settle down, settle down,” Gerry ordered. “She’s just guessing. She doesn’t know anything for certain. She’s probably just trying to scare us into bowing and scraping to her, and giving up our freedom. Thanks for the offer of being our queen. It sounds great, but I think we’ll pass.”

  “You don’t have a choice in the matter,” she said and her tone was frosty. “It’s up to the people to decide for themselves and so far you seem a less than ideal leader. What do all of you know about the Corsairs?”

  Although she had addressed the crowd only one person ventured to answer. “They’s evil all the way.”

  “And will they allow a defeat to stop them from…”

  “Wait!” Gerry cried. “Did you call yourself Jillian or Jillybean?” A woman near him had a lantern. He snatched it from her hand and advanced on Jillybean and shone the light into her face. “William! William! Is this her?”

  William Trafney, the man Jillybean had saved from a certain death after getting shot through the lung, was back on the island. He nodded, saying, “That’s the girl who saved my life. She’s an expert doctor.”

  Gerry growled at the answer. “She’s also a murderer and she’s insane. And look it’s Mike Gunter and Stu Currans, the people who stole the Calypso! We can’t trust them! They say she murdered a man in cold blood and then burnt down everything north of the bridge. She’s no queen.”

  There was a great deal of whispering and Gerry stood back, holding the light high enough to cast a shadow across her face.

  “She is a queen,” Stu roared out, shocking everyone. No one present had ever heard him raise his voice even once. “And she is not a murderer. One Shot came at her and she shot him, BUT she also operated on him to try to save him. Unfortunately he died from complications.”

  He saw Gerry readying a rebuttal and he went on quickly, “She also saved me when some cannibals shot me in Portland. And she saved Aaron and William.”

  “Also she saved all the people in Sacramento,” Mike said. “First she saved them from some Corsairs and then she healed like two hundred people.”

  “She did this all in a week?” Gerry scoffed. “People we can’t believe him. Mike is no lo
nger one of us. He is a thief!”

  Mike bristled. “We borrowed the boat to save William and Stu got shot in the process. It’s more than you did, Gerry. And besides…” He shot a quick glance at Jillybean who nodded once, knowing already what he was going to say. “Besides, the Queen will let you have the Saber as a replacement.”

  He patted the boom as if he were giving up a child. Compared to the Saber the Calypso was little more than a rowboat. It was such an astounding offer that even Gerry looked taken back.

  “There are stipulations,” Jillybean said.

  “Oh, here we go,” Gerry cried. “What? Do I have to bow down and kiss your feet? If so then you can go fu…”

  She interrupted him by flicking on a flashlight aimed at his face. The sharp light blinded him and he threw up a hand. “It would be wise of you not to finish that sentence.”

  “She has a flashlight!” someone said in a carrying whisper as if they alone could see the piercing light.

  “They say she can make electricity,” someone else blurted out, restating the same unexaggerated rumors that flew about her from one side of the bay to the other.

  Jenn had a flashlight of her own—given to her by Jillybean, of course—and she turned it into the faces of the Islanders crowding around them. “She also makes batteries and antibiotics that I’ve seen work with my own eyes. William knows, she cured him with some. And Mike wasn’t lying about the Corsairs. It was her plan that drove them from the hilltop and she used a bomb to make them surrender in Sacramento.”

  The word “bomb” floated around the dock until Gerry growled, “This has gone too far. What about her being crazy? What about that? Donna and everyone on the hilltop thinks she is crazy, and dangerous. Can we really trust her?” This struck home. People had a natural fear of insanity.

  “A certain amount of instability goes hand in hand with genius,” Jillybean admitted, glad now that Gerry’s arm had grown tired and that her face was only a pale heart set against a black backdrop. If anyone turned a light on her they would have seen her eyes flickering both badly and madly.

  The dark and the stress had stirred up Eve. She was growing inside Jillybean who suddenly began to sense a growing anger. It was like a black steam that wafted up from her core. It only grew worse as her admission, which seemed to have amounted to a “confession” caused more whispers to ripple the night.

  Outwardly, Jillybean looked as though she were giving the people time to perhaps get over the surprise of her self-incriminating testimony when in truth she only let the whispering go on for half a minute because she was wrestling with Eve, trying to keep her bottled up.

  When she could, she admitted to even more insanity, trying to make a joke of it. “It is a fact that my people secretly call me the ‘Mad Queen,’ and yet they have abandoned their home to follow me here aboard the Floating Fortress. They will fight the Corsairs for me and…”

  “Maybe they are all mad,” Gerry interrupted with a forced laugh, sounding a little mad himself.

  “I may be mad but they are not,” she shot back. “And what of my madness? At least I foresaw the danger coming and I have a plan to deal with it. What will you do when two hundred ships and three thousand men come streaming under the bridge?”

  Everyone turned to see Gerry struggling with the question. His mind was spinning as badly as Jillybean’s. Unlike her, he had been sleeping peacefully five minutes before and was completely unprepared for a midnight challenge to his authority. He had no idea what he would do if the Corsairs came back.

  It had been a terrible shock when they had showed up twelve days before and the ensuing battle had left him and the Islanders cowering. For three days they spied through telescopes at the twenty-four Corsair boats sitting in Pelican Harbor. On the fourth morning after the battle they were gone without a trace.

  They were still debating things when, on the eighth day, fire poured down the hill, sweeping everything before it and blotting out the sky under the blackest cloud anyone had ever seen. Gerry had adopted a wait and see approach, but it felt more like hiding to everyone. Finally, when the fires went north and no more had been seen of the Corsairs, the Islanders had summoned their courage and went out on the Puffer to see what had happened to the Hill People.

  Shockingly they were still alive and still holed up in their apartment complex. They had named Jillybean as both their savior and their personal Satan.

  This should have been enough for the Islanders to turn on her right at that moment and yet they hadn’t. They were looking at Gerry for answers. He glared angrily into the beam from Jillybean’s flashlight. “Why do we listen to a stranger? A stranger who comes at night like a thief. Like these thieves.” He pointed at Mike Stu and Jenn. “They are all criminals. You heard the stories from Donna and Orlando just like me.”

  “They also heard my story,” William said. His story, which he had told a hundred times in the last three days, making him somewhat of a celebrity on the island, painted a much different picture of the four, one filled with heroism, loyalty and an amazing display of surgical knowledge.

  “They are still criminals,” Gerry countered, “while I have done nothing.”

  “It’s the fact that you have done nothing that should be concerning to these people,” Jillybean replied.

  Use the bomb on him, Eve whispered suddenly. At least Jillybean hoped it was a whisper. Eve was becoming more than a shadow. Stick it down his pants and tell him to fall in line or else. We can give them a demonstration. We could blow up the faggy little Puffer.

  Jillybean could feel a craving for fire and death. She squeezed her eyes shut as Gerry went on, “If you call keeping my people safe, doing nothing then okay then. And we aren’t scared of the Corsairs! We have our walls and they are strong. We could hold off an army.”

  “Yes, if they come in dumb,” Jillybean said. “But they won’t this time. They learned their lesson. While you hide behind your walls, they will devour the Hill People and parade their bodies, draped over their ships. It’ll be your one warning. But they won’t attack. Why?”

  She paused for effect and was rewarded as the far off moan of a zombie stretched over the dark waters.

  “They won’t need to attack. They have all the time in the world to wait until you starve to death or, more than likely run out of water.”

  Gerry pointed up at the water tower. “Oh really? We have at least a month of water up there.”

  “That doesn’t look bulletproof to me and it won’t look it to the Corsairs either. They’ll come out of the night when their boats will be just shadows.” She paused again and looked out at the bay where, for all anyone knew, there could be a hundred Corsair boats lurking even then.

  “They’ll come silently up and shoot it full of holes and be gone again before you can do a thing. Then they’ll just sit back and wait until you are dying of thirst. No, they won’t need to attack you, Gerry. You’ll be begging them to surrender in a week.”

  She walked up to him, shining the light on his chest, so that his face was eerily shadowed and his eyes dark with uncertainty. “They’ll make you promises of safety. They’ll tell you lies and you’ll eat ‘em up with a knife and fork because, what choice will you have? You made your choice, didn’t you, Gerry? You decided to hide behind your walls instead of making a stand. You let your ego get in the way of doing the right thing for your people.”

  “I didn’t,” he said in a choked voice.

  “Then kneel and show true leadership and courage.”

  Even though this strangely beguiling woman had made terrible sense at every turn, Gerry hesitated, afraid that he was being tricked somehow. “What if they never come?”

  Now it was Jillybean’s turn to hesitate. The stress of the moment, as well as the last two weeks was coming down hard on her, filling her throat and her mind with screams of fear and anger and imagined misery. She had to turn away to hold it all in.

  Jenn saw her anguish and came to her defense. “They will come. I’ve
seen it.” She crossed herself before saying, “The vision is one of death, great death. Many, many deaths and one way or the other it will happen. I see these visions and I am frightened right down in the pit of my stomach and yet they are a gift. They give us time to prepare.”

  “Or to run,” someone said.

  “Who was that, Ryan?” Mike asked, squinting at a figure who suddenly slunk behind a taller friend. “It’s okay. I had the same response.” He quickly gave the same reasons for not running as Jillybean had given him. There was a smattering of curses as people began to realize that not only was Mike right, they were left little choice but to fight against very long odds.

  By then Jillybean had mastered herself. “Your choices are very limited,” she said, no longer talking to Gerry, but to the entire group. “You may follow your current leadership which has served you well enough in times of peace or you may join me and perhaps survive the coming battle. I make no promises. We are facing the greatest armada since the beginning of the apocalypse. The only thing I ask is that you accept me as your Queen and follow my directions as if they come from God above.”

  This was a huge thing to ask in the dead of night with almost nothing to show as proof and an immediate wire-stiff tension ran through the crowd. They had been scared into believing the Corsairs were coming and had been shown that Gerry wasn’t quite the war-time leader they needed, and all that was terribly worrisome—but they were being asked to take a knee to a queen.

  Just like the people of Sacramento, most of them still hung on to some small shred of their American identity and Americans didn’t scrape and bow. Stu had expected exactly this and felt a sharp hot embarrassment for Jillybean.

  “My name is Stuart Currans. I have not pledged myself officially to the Queen. I do so now.” He stepped off the boat and knelt on one knee in front of her. She smiled down at him beautiful and sexy, more of a pirate queen than some fantasy queen out of a picture book. “Do I need to say something?”