The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  She laughed, a low sound that grew in joy. If no one else kneeled before her, she knew she would still be satisfied. “I think you should pledge your life and your sacred honor to me.”

  “I do. I pledge my life and sacred honor to you, my Queen.” It felt very much like a marriage proposal the way he said this and she had to stifle a giddiness that wanted to bubble out of her—Eve was gone, swallowed up by her happiness. She held out her hand and he did the exact right thing, bending his head forward and kissing the back of it.

  He stood and sighed. Their eyes were locked and she was a little surprised when Jenn knelt and made the same pledge, going so far as to kiss her hand as well.

  Mike, who was always going back and forth with Jillybean was the slowest. So slow that William pushed his way in front of him and Mike was quick to hold his arm as he knelt and offered his life to the Queen.

  “If it’s worth anything,” he added.

  “Why would I have saved it if I hadn’t thought it worth saving?”

  When he kissed her hand, Mike helped him up and was about to kneel himself when an old friend of his George Parry, asked, “Before I even think about kneeling and I ain’t said I am, I wanna know what you plan on doin’ that’s gonna be all that diff-er-ent than Gerry.”

  “Before I do, I must send Mike and Jenn off on an errand,” she said. In a quieter voice she told the two, “Get back as fast as you can. Do not wait for sunrise to move the Fortress.”

  She had kept her voice perfectly calm. Her hand on Mike’s arm was another matter. There was great urgency in her grip and in her look. Mike barely waited for Jenn to get her legs beneath her before he heaved the Saber away from the dock, snatched up a westerly breeze in her main and shot her towards the northwest.

  The islanders watched her go, Gerry with a longing that he couldn’t hide.

  Mike stood proudly at the wheel until the island was out of sight, then he slumped, running a hand along the spokes. He hated the idea of giving her up. It was the right thing to do and getting Gerry’s help made it also the only thing he could do, but he was sure it was something like giving up a child.

  “You still have me,” Jenn said. She knew what had him suddenly sad and a part of her wanted to give up the Saber as fast as possible. It had been Mike she had seen in that second vision—she had no problem picturing him, his hair golden in the light shining down while hell-dark clouds of smoke came racing to envelope him.

  Let that be Gerry, she thought. It was a horrible thought, one she couldn’t help and one she didn’t try to help. She loved Mike. Whenever she had a moment to rest or to put aside the many, many cares that felt like they were draped on her like chains, she would search out Mike’s smiling face—and was always rewarded.

  He smiled at that moment and some of the weight on her was blown away, but not all of it.

  It wouldn’t be Gerry facing whatever hell was coming. The wind blowing her hair around whispered this to her. If there was ever a sign, the wind racing them northeast was it, and she had no doubt that when they tied themselves to the hundred-ton barge, the wind would turn right around again and shoot them right down again.

  Just as she had foreseen, they made it back to the barge in little more than an hour, hooked up, weighed the heavy anchor, listening to the ropes creak as they picked up the strain. With the expanse of the bay to use, Mike began tacking only to find himself trudging directly into the wind.

  “That’s lucky,” he said and swung south with the wind dead on their starboard side.

  “Yeah,” Jenn said so breathlessly that the same wind pushing them to their fate caught the word and shoved it back down her throat.

  They followed almost the same course as they had coming down and although now the tide was against them, they cleared the western edge of Angel Island just as the sun rose and the wind eased. Mike’s keen eyes picked out the sail before anyone.

  “Sail ho!” he cried, sending Jenn’s heart into her throat. Instead of the thousand black sails she feared would be stretching from one end of the bay to the other, it was only the dinky white triangle of the Puffer. Mike brought out his binoculars.

  The boat was crowded with five of the seven members of the Coven. They gradually came close enough for him to see Miss Shay’s pinched face as she surveyed the barge with a sneer. “Take a look at that.” Mike handed Jenn the binoculars.

  “Uhg! I know the barge is not the…”

  “The Floating Fortress,” he corrected. It sounded a whole lot better than just ‘the barge.’ He knew with the rust and the clunky containers arrayed like building blocks on her deck, she would never be what anyone would consider stylish, but she could pass for a kind of fortress and she was floating.

  “I like that better, too. It makes it sound, I don’t know, tougher, I guess.” She gave Mike a grin and then looked at Miss Shay. “Oh, she’s gotten worse. It looks like she just ate the head off a bat. Take a look.”

  He took the binoculars back. “You aren’t kidding, except I’d say it looks like she just took a heaping spoonful of hot…” The sneer suddenly vanished and was replaced by surprise. Miss Shay was pointing toward the Floating Fortress. Mike pulled the glasses away to see, first dozens and then at least two hundred people crowding the tops of the containers or coming out into the few open areas of the exposed hull.

  Everyone on board the Puffer stared as they passed. Then they came abreast of the Saber. George Parry was piloting and gave Mike a friendly wave. He waved back and then he and Jenn waved at the Coven. Donna and Lois nodded, but the other three only stared with hard faces. This was especially pronounced on Miss Shay’s face. She stared so hard at Jenn that she had to look away.

  Jenn looked down into the water where their reflections were wobbly and strangely distorted, and somewhat frightening. She was still staring when the smaller, lighter boat skimmed away.

  “You okay?” Mike asked her.

  She wasn’t. What she had seen in the water had been a sign. Like some of the signs shown to her, she knew the truth behind it the second she saw it.

  “How long will it take to get to the island?”

  The urgency in her voice made Mike nervous. He peered around the mainsail at Alcatraz. It sat dead on, not much more than a mile away, but with every passing minute the wind was dying. Beneath them the waves had become only an easy swell, slowly lifting them and dropping them in a gentle waltz.

  “Forty minutes and that’s if the bar…I mean the Fortress, can find a good spot to anchor that’ll hold.”

  Jenn stood, looking back and forth, knowing that they didn’t have forty minutes. “Let her go! Cut her free. We have to get to the island as fast as possible.” She went to the closest of the wrist-thick tow ropes.

  Mike grabbed her hands. “You want me to let the barge go here? Are you crazy?”

  “I’m not the crazy one,” she shot back, pulling her hands free. “Jillybean is and the Coven knows it. They’re going to bring out Eve.”

  “Why would they do that? They know how dangerous she is.”

  The signs never gave Jenn a “Why” they only gave a hint of what was to come. In this case it was obvious. “They’re crazy, too. They’re delusional. They don’t want to believe life can get even worse that it is now. And there’s nothing worse than life under the Corsairs. Even the dead are nothing compared to them.”

  Chapter 36

  William Trafney had been the first to bend his knee and proclaim Jillybean his queen. He had not been the last. Out of fear alone, Jillybean had half-won over the Islanders just by explaining the forces arrayed against them. Once she explained her defensive concept, which made heavy use of the natural terrain, and allowed the defenders to fight from positions of cover and protection, fourteen more came over to her side.

  They formed a line along the dock and each knelt in turn. It was a disappointing number especially as Stu could see that almost all of the rest were on the verge of accepting her as their queen, and would have if only they weren’
t so shockingly feeble.

  Their miserable fear was deplorable. Under the cover of the dark, they snuck cowardly looks back and forth at one another, waiting to see what everyone else was going to do. The lack of courage on display was especially hard to witness for Stu since courage was exactly what was needed if they were going to have any chance against the Corsairs.

  Gerry Xydis knew that he was part of the problem and had he been just another sailor he would have pledged himself to Jillybean, however, as their leader he simply couldn’t commit himself without more proof than just her word.

  “Let me see this Floating Fortress of yours,” he told Jillybean. “Then maybe we can come to some sort of deal.”

  Up to this point Stu thought Jillybean had been amazing, hitting every note just right in spelling out the dreadful plight they were all in and then giving the Islanders a glimmer of hope when she described her plan of defense. Then, inexplicably, she blew it by not challenging the word “deal.”

  There could be no deal. Everything depended on seamless cooperation which could only occur under the command of a single leader. A government started with compromises and one with built-in factions would undoubtedly fail its very first test.

  To make matters worse she said, “That’s understandable. I’m sure the Coven will have the same stipulation. To save time could you send someone to bring them here as soon as possible?”

  Stu was very close to butting in at this point, only he couldn’t since it would undermine Jillybean and make it look as if anyone could throw in their two cents on a whim. When Gerry turned away to ask for a volunteer, Stu whispered to Jillybean, “The Coven hates you. They’ll try to sabotage you and screw this up for everyone. You should’ve waited until the Islanders were squarely on your side before bringing them in.”

  “You are probably right,” she said, leaning on him. He was shocked to find she was shaking and, up close, he could see that fatigue in her eyes. “I’ve been fighting Eve,” she explained, “and it’s starting to take its toll. I need to rest at least for a little while.”

  As the sun could very well rise on a Corsairs fleet streaming into the bay, there was no time to rest. Then again, she was a special case and Stu knew their lives counted on Jillybean remaining herself. William Trafney jumped at the chance to help her and gave up his bed as George Parry took the Puffer across the bay to the hilltop.

  He was gone for four hours, a strangely long time and if Stu had been awake he would have both furious and nervous—furious, thinking that the Coven was already playing games and nervous because it was conceivable the Corsairs could have already landed on the Pacific side of the peninsula and was even then carrying away prisoners from the hilltop.

  Stu slept the four hours away in blissful ignorance while sitting on a reclining chair, his head thrown back and snoring, making a sound somewhat reminiscent of six men sawing logs.

  Jillybean slept deeply and silently. The moment the sun cracked the eastern horizon, she opened one eye to make sure she was alone and safe. When she sat up she felt one moment of serenity. It was just long enough to take an easy breath before the full weight of the stress she had voluntarily taken on her shoulders came crushing down. With it came Eve’s relentless attacks.

  You’re going to kill us all! Buoys? Chunks of rocks, a few chains and some rope? You can’t fight an army with a bunch of crap like this. THEY ARE THE CORSAIRS, DAMN IT! Your ‘people’ are pussies and we both know they’re going to cut and run at the first volley. They’ll leave us high and dry and then…

  “Stop,” Jillybean hissed. “I know what I’m doing.” Only she didn’t, not completely, at least. She understood warfare probably better than anyone left alive, and that included quite a number of men who had been American soldiers. These men had trained with the most sophisticated command and control system ever conceived, and they had used weapons that allowed them to destroy their enemies from so far away there was no reason to wait until the whites of anyone’s eyes could be seen.

  Yes, there were some still alive who had been part of tactical teams that could clear a village or breach a building. This did not make them military geniuses and nor did it give them the same insights into the human psyche that Jillybean possessed.

  She knew people and she knew history. Along with her other pursuits, she had studied war—not the wars of the twentieth century, where logistics and massed firepower played more of a role than the individual soldier, but the small wars and battles, especially those of antiquity since the barbarism and the lack of technology of the times so closely paralleled theirs.

  But you don’t know jack about boats, do you? Eve demanded, cutting in on her thoughts like a braying donkey. I know it. I can see whenever there’s a gaping hole in your vast super-duper intellect. It’s like a great sucking blackness and when you…

  “Shut up!”

  Why? Because you’re afraid of the truth? You don’t know jack when it comes to naval warfare, and what do you got looking you dead in the eye? A naval battle!

  “Shut-up!”

  They got at least two hundred boats with the best sailors in the world and what do you have?

  Before she could spit out a retort, there came a knock on William’s bedroom door. Stu let himself in, the worry obvious in his eyes. He didn’t need to ask if there was something wrong.

  “I need my pills,” Jillybean said, feeling the ugly ache of addiction. She hungered for something to drown out Eve’s incessant voice. Even though she knew the danger, she begged, “I just need one or two and only for a little while. Maybe just for a few days.”

  She seemed to be asking Stu for permission. “I don’t know,” he said, quietly, not sure what the right thing to do was. “You’ve been doing great without them. You know, except for a few little outbursts and those were manageable.” He was about to go on when there came a shout from the direction of the dock. It was taken up by a hundred voices.

  “The Fortress is here!” William cried from just outside the door. This wasn’t exactly true. It was still a mile out and Mike had not yet freed the Saber from her giant wallowing stepchild. The barge seemed immense to the Islanders. It was too far away for the rust to be visible and to them it looked like a great block of impervious steel.

  The cheers were enough to drown out Eve, sending her muttering into a corner of Jillybean’s mind. “We should go see Gerry,” Jillybean said, heading straight out of the ugly, cold concrete building where a third of the Islanders lived in what were almost cells.

  They found him in the guard tower with a pair of binoculars propped up to his eyes. “What are the tents and the pipes for on top of the containers?”

  “We have running water aboard. There are toilets and showers within the tents.” She hoped she didn’t have to explain the obvious use of the outflow pipes. “If I decide to keep her, I’ll put in a coal-fired steam engine which will give her propulsion, electricity, and of course, heat.”

  As he had binoculars and could see the rust and the scrawled graffiti on the side of some of the containers, he wasn’t exactly impressed by the barge itself. However the idea of running water by itself was shocking enough but an engine on top of that?

  “Huh,” he grunted. “That’s pretty cool…if you can do it.”

  Stu glared and was about to tell him about the electric motor she had made when he spotted the Puffer zip along the starboard side of the Floating Fortress.

  “It’s about time,” Gerry said and turned for the ladder. “We’ll go to my office. Don’t be surprised if they start throwing around a lot of voodoo mumbo jumbo talk. It’s what they do when they’re confused.” He was five rungs down when he stopped and peered upwards. “Hey, speaking of which, has Jenn seen anything?”

  Jillybean didn’t answer. The dark child inside of her had started in again with her nasty, angry diatribe and Jillybean was having trouble even focusing on the rungs.

  “Yeah, she did,” Stu answered. “If it had been anyone else I could have laughed it off. B
ut with her…it’s creepy.”

  “Was it bad? What did she see?”

  Stu shrugged. “I didn’t want to know. We can ask her when she gets here.” He gestured out at the bay where the Saber was slowly pulling away from the Floating Fortress. “What is Mike doing?”

  Jillybean turned her lamp-like eyes towards the barge as it slowly drifted westward with the tide and the current. She felt a stab of panic and ran for the binoculars, thrust them to her face and scanned out to the ocean, expecting to see the Corsairs, but the water was empty.

  “It’s Jenn,” she said, relieved. “Mike would never leave a boat to drift without a reason. She’s seen something new, no doubt.”

  Far from reassured, Stu and Gerry, the two biggest skeptics of mystical powers, shared a nervous look. They both had to push aside the desire to wait on the wall like most of the population of the Island was doing. The Puffer had docked and the five Coven members were stumping up towards them.

  Four of the five looked grave while the fifth, Miss Shay, glared around her until she caught sight of Jillybean. “Murderer!” she charged in a full-throated shrill scream. This shocked the crowd into silence and when Miss Shay carried on, “She killed One Shot Saul. Arrest her! Arrest her at once!” Jenn could hear it across the nearly still waters of the bay.

  “She’s going to turn, Mike. She’s going to become Eve and then we’ll all die.” She was so utterly sure of this that she considered slipping into the water and kicking with her feet to get them moving faster.

  Mike let out every inch of sail he could and strained the Saber back and forth fighting to steal any stray breath of air. They crawled to the dock and as worried as Jenn was for Jillybean, Mike was equally so for the Floating Fortress. It was steadily heading out towards the ocean. They had let out the anchor but only had a hundred feet of rope for it and now they were above a channel that was close on three hundred feet deep.

  “I won’t be able to stay,” he told her. He would have to turn right around and pray that he could catch a breeze or two because once the barge got beyond the Golden Gate Bridge he didn’t know if the Saber would be able to get her back, especially if the wind went in any direction save for due west.