The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  This caused a roar of laughter, forcing Gloom to accept the game. Stu should have been completely overmatched. He had seen the terrific pressure Gloom put on Jillybean as well as the subtle traps he had used against Eve. He knew his limited experience was nothing compared to Gloom’s.

  But he had his own advantages. For starters, the very fact that he had seen the pressure and the traps was something. When he sat down he was prepared, while Gloom looked across at an utter blank of a man. Stu was naturally so quiet and still that Gloom could not get any sort of read on him.

  Stu stared out with dark eyes and whether he won a hand or lost one he did not flinch or blink. Raises, calls and folds were made with that same economy of movement and lack of emotion. Bluffs were made with that same unblinking stare. Because of his stone cold look, Stu could bluff while Gloom could not. Stu had no extraordinary ability to ferret out Gloom’s tells, but Jillybean was right there and whenever Gloom attempted a bluff she would lean her knee against Stu’s.

  The game ground on for an hour and as it went on Gloom grew more and more furious as Stu dodged every trap. Finally Gloom himself was trapped. With a scream of rage he kicked over the table a second after Stu laid his cards down. The spurious charge of cheating was on Gloom’s lips but became mangled by his furious cursing which only grew worse as both Stu and Jillybean said nothing and sat motionless.

  “You are a dead man!” Gloom roared, his face going purple, the veins thick as fingers, bulging out from his skin.

  Stu was unmoved. He sat, casually staring upwards as whispers of confusion and shock went round the room. The Santas had never seen Gloom beaten so easily and it hadn’t been just the man either, the woman had outplayed him as well and only bad luck had sunk her. There could only be one explanation: “They cheated,” someone yelled.

  The Santas, all eleven hundred and twenty of them, were gamblers and most of them would cheat their assess off, if they could get away with it. Still, to be publicly castigated as a cheater was bad news and then not to deny it was even worse. Stu said nothing, while Jillybean only arched a single eyebrow over a quickly flickering blue eye as her right hand went slowly and obviously to one of her detonators.

  The whispering grew until it was like harsh static all around them and few people heard Gloom say, “You wouldn’t dare.” Just to the side of the overturned card table was the bag of bombs.

  Eve was almost all the way back and she wanted to blow them up right then and there—all she could envision was the joy of being in the heart of the blast warm and finally free forever. “Don’t tempt me,” Jillybean said. “A part of me really wants to do it.”

  Gloom didn’t know if she was lying or not. She seemed to be no longer guarded as she had been during the second half of their game and he thought he could read the hunger for death in those crazy eyes. He hesitated. Was this another bluff? It had to be, and yet… “Shut up!” he bellowed, stretching out his long arms. He couldn’t think straight with all the noise and the immensity of his anger. He was missing something in all of this.

  Why had the girl come? For her boats? With just a bag of bombs to bargain with? It didn’t make sense and neither did she. The only thing that truly did was: “You’re crazy,” he said.

  “Yes.” The word needed no adjective, no embellishment. “Now show me the Windy Rose. Show me MY boat!” She stood and there was no need for any particular ability to read people to see the insanity. Her maniac’s grin and the fever in her eyes had those crowding near to back up a step. Stu, looking poised, but feeling nervous as hell, grabbed the bag and followed her as she pushed onto a huge, sun-warped deck that had once been a source of pride and vanity to its long-dead owner.

  It creaked and swayed under the weight of the crowd as it followed them out into the early night. The boats were mere shadows and even if he wanted to point out the Windy Rose, Gloom couldn’t.

  “Well?” Jillybean demanded.

  “Well what? If you want the damned boat, go get it yourself.” Gloom was in a bad way. He had never been in such a state of confused anger in his life. The embarrassing loss was bad enough, but on top of it was the constant ridicule she had heaped on him all night. With every second he was losing face; he wanted her far away and at the same time he wanted to break her in two. He could break her if he wanted to. She was so small and if she didn’t have the bombs…

  Were they even real?

  “I want you to show me the Windy Rose,” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “It’s a damned piece of crap,” Gloom lied. The Corsair who had owned it before had made up for its lack of size by making sure it was the nicest boat in their fleet. “And you can sink in her for all I care.”

  Jillybean turned to Stu. “What do you think? Should we blow her up?”

  As always, Stu was slow to answer and before he could Gloom, looking mad himself, demanded, “What did you just say?”

  Stu finally said, “I think so,” in his slow drawl. As much as he hated the idea, it was part of the plan.

  The crowd, on pins and needles to find out what was going to happen next, hissed in low whispers as those in front passed along info to those behind. Jillybean put up her hood where the radio headset was sewn in and asked, “What’s the number, Jenn?”

  Gloom was almost as caught up as the crowd and he started looking from Stu to Jillybean, going back and forth until he heard a tiny voice say, “Number four. You’re good to go.”

  “Number four,” Jillybean said and took up the detonator with the bold 4 written on it in white ink. “We don’t want to get the wrong detonator,” she told Gloom with a wink and a jutted chin toward the bag Stu carried.

  “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  With the sweetest smile, she held up the detonator and pushed the send button. Immediately the night exploded into light and fire, and a shockingly loud blast that shook the windows and rolled around the bay like a single immense thunder clap. Everyone on the deck gasped and surged backwards. Screams broke out and people were trampled as some fled inside while others stared in fascinated horror.

  When Gloom recovered from his shock, he could only wag his head and ask, “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “Because I can!” Jillybean yelled, her fist curled around another detonator. She was about to go on in a crow’s screech when Stu laid a steadying hand on her shoulder. He squeezed, gently, reminding her of who she was. Only she knew his intimate touch. It helped, a little.

  With yellow blobs still in her vision and the specter of darkness lurking inside of her, Jillybean recovered enough to repeat, “Because I can,” in a softer voice. “These boats are mine. I defeated the Corsairs, not you. I am Queen and you are nothing.”

  Gloom balled his fists and although they were the huge and scarred, she laughed in his face, daring him to punch her, but he couldn’t while she held the detonator. “What are you waiting for?” she asked around a wicked, smarmy grin. If he had been thinking straight he would have seen the grin was also a bluff. It was imitation, only. “Go on. Hit me and see what happens.”

  Slowly, he dropped his fists while at the same time his lips screwed up in savage hate. Everyone was watching and they saw that he was powerless against her.

  “Good boy, good doggy,” Jillybean said in a strangled voice—Eve was so close it felt like she was crawling up her throat like a thick, dry snake. She swallowed, loudly. “These are my boats and half are rigged to explode and when they go boom, they’ll take the other half with them. Do you understand?”

  “Not really.”

  “And that’s why you were chosen. Go ahead, Stu.” Gloom was still blinking, feeling slow and stupid, when Stu slung the bag around his shoulders. The two hustled him down the stairs of the deck while his people watched without lifting a finger. “You’re kidnapping me?”

  She snorted at this. “If your people would actually pay a nickel for you I would consider it, but look at them.” Stu pulled him around so he could see three hundred people, hi
s people, watching from the safety of the house. Watching, but not lifting a finger.

  “You see? You’re impotent now, nothing but my little bitch. I will be back for the rest of my boats. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Your job is to have them in the water and ready to go. Is that understood?”

  Hate boiled in him and he had visions of burning the boats right there in the middle of the bay or better yet sailing them against this little bitch of a queen. “I’ll get them ready. Don’t worry about that.”

  The last word had just left his mouth when a black boat suddenly appeared, whispering right up to the dock. The bag was pulled roughly from his shoulders and before he knew the Queen and her stone-faced man were gone, the boat gliding away like a giant black swan.

  “Any pursuit?” Mike asked.

  Jenn was watching through the starlight scope. “Not a thing.”

  “Still, to be sure,” he said, letting out the main completely. “Stu, you wanna get the jib?”

  “One sec.” He looked Jillybean in the eye. “Is that you in there?” She nodded and then hugged him, holding him for so long that Mike grumbled something and went to let out the jib himself.

  They were still locked in an embrace when Mike went back to the wheel. “So, did it work? Does he hate our guts?”

  Jillybean looked over Stu’s broad shoulder. “Enough to kill.”

  “So the right amount?” Mike joked. Jenn’s look went from tired to tired and glum. “It was a joke. Look, it’s going to be fine. You saw their boats. They’ll never be able to catch us. I bet even Stu can out sail them.” He laughed at his own joke and was the only one who did.

  Jenn was sure she wouldn’t be able to find anything funny until Mike was safe. They would all have dangerous parts to play in the battle, but his was the most like suicide.

  A moan and a splash in front of the Saber quieted them. In seconds they were amidst a school of zombies and were rocked and buffeted despite the size of the boat. They were tense, ready to hack or shoot, knowing that it wouldn’t take many of them to swamp the boat.

  Then they were clear and slipping north with a gentle five knot wind almost directly on their port beam. Jillybean yawned which was followed by one from Stu. “We should rest as much as possible,” she said.

  Jenn volunteered to sail for the next four hours. “Alone,” she said, when Mike tried to settle in next to her under a blanket. “You need your sleep more than anyone. Make him sleep in the cabin, Jillybean.” Harried by the two women and frankly very tired, Mike went down into the front cabin still giving out a slew of suggestions concerning the ship, the water conditions and the possible hazards ahead.

  The only real hazard Jenn faced was staying awake; somehow she managed it until they were a few hundred yards from the remains of the Bay Bridge. Most of the structure was eroding to nothing a hundred feet below the water, however four or five useless spans still sat like giant tables looking out over the city. She aimed the boat toward the western section where there were only five towers to avoid in a mile of otherwise open harbor.

  Thumping her foot on the deck brought Mike rushing up, his long blond hair in complete disarray. “What is it? Oh, we’re here already? You should pass leeward of that tower. Being upwind of it only invites trouble. Better safe than sorry.”

  A moment later Jillybean and Stu were there. “Four in the morning?” Jillybean asked. “That was a long haul, Jenn. You should go below and catch a few Zs.”

  She didn’t have to be told twice and was asleep before Mike adjusted course to dodge the tower, down wind. This also put him closer to Treasure Island, which was dark and quiet; no sign of the Corsairs on this side, of course its one large pier lay hidden on the other.

  Stu used the starlight scope but saw nothing but a sleeping island. He switched his view to Alcatraz which was a small hump rising out of the bay two miles away; it was too far to see anything. Mike went north a full mile out of their way; he wanted to give Jenn get an extra thirty minutes of sleep as well so they could come at the island on a diagonal and not directly into the steady wind. If there was trouble he would have enough speed on him to veer away.

  Thankfully, they found the docks were empty of Corsair boats; strangely, there were still people working, hauling items from the doughty little Puffer. “Ahoy Alcatraz,” Mike called in a carrying whisper as they drew close. “It’s the Saber.” No one wanted to get shot for being mistaken as a Corsair.

  “It’s about damned time!” Gerry the Greek groused, much to the amazement of the small crowd of shadowy people working alongside of him. “They’re coming, Mike. The Corsairs really are coming.”

  Although this was exactly what they expected, all four of them felt the same stabbing panic in their chests. Jenn who was still bleary and had just come on deck with the warmth of sleep still curling around her was sure she was going to cry. Tears seemed to spring to her eyes. She found Mike’s hands and grabbed them. They were cold and tense, and at the same time damp with sweat. He was shaking.

  Stu tried to swallow his fear, only he choked on it and while his chest swelled in growing dread, his throat locked tight. The two reactions rendered him even more speechless than ever.

  Jillybean felt the same dread as anyone else, though her sense of it was dampened as it ran right up against a sudden blaze of fury that wanted her to scream with hellfire pouring out of her mouth—uncontrollable anger was Eve’s way of dealing with fear.

  There was a brief and inconclusive battle within her as the two, almost incompatible sensations, sent her mind into a spin. She wobbled, casting an arm out and finding one of the many ropes that ran from the mast. “D-did the scouts pick them up?” she asked. One of her first actions had been to send scouts with radios to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, thirty miles away. It had a perfect view of the Pacific. “How many of them are there?”

  Gerry paused so long that Jillybean began to grow irate. It was no time for theatrics. But Gerry wasn’t trying to play it up, he was quite a bit drunk and having trouble spitting out the number. “A hundred and seventy-nine and they’re all crammed with men.”

  Chapter 40

  A hundred and seventy-nine. Crammed with men. Crammed. The word conjured images of boats so overcrowded that people were constantly being knocked into the water and left behind, screaming and waving their hands in vain.

  Crammed.

  Jillybean felt a lurch inside her, a shift of her personalities. It was almost like putting a shirt on sideways. Eve stared out of her left eye while Jillybean had the right, as well as control of their mind—mostly. She could move her body and think in the simplest of terms, but Eve, like an anchor, hampered her so that Jillybean couldn’t even work out the easiest math problems.

  It was eternally frustrating that she couldn’t even estimate the numbers of Corsairs arrayed against her. What did crammed really mean? Did it mean there were up to thirty men per boat or fifty or twelve hundred…Eve began rattling off every number she knew which, thanks to her hatred of everything that had to do with math, wasn’t all that many.

  “Twenty,” Jillybean said under her breath. “We’ll call it twenty.”

  Does it even matter? You can’t win, bitch! Winning was never part of the plan so get that out of our head right now. You tried. Good for you. Now let’s get out of here before the sun comes up.

  “Get out of my head!” Jillybean whispered sharply, wishing she were alone. She could feel the others staring at her and she hated it. It made her skin crawl. It made everything worse. “I don’t need you yet.” She turned away so the others wouldn’t stare, so they wouldn’t see how hard it was for her even to calculate a simple number. One seventy-nine times twenty. Normally the answer would just pop right into her head; now nothing popped, she was an utter blank.

  She cursed unintelligibly, making a hissing sound through clenched teeth. Stu cocked an eyebrow at her which was a hundred times worse than the stares. It made her want to rip that eyebrow off and shove it down his…

&n
bsp; Jillybean caught herself and reined in her unbridled anger long enough for her to ask, “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on, Gerry. I mean me. Tell me what’s going on?”

  Gerry cleared his throat, his lips twisted in distaste, partially from the sour gin-ish burp that had just come up from his churning stomach, but mostly because of the insane creature he had knelt in front of eighteen long hours before. At some point after the sun went down he had begun worrying it might have been a mistake to make her queen, now he was sure of it. But what could he do? he thought to himself, morosely. There was no escape in the pathetic little Puffer and Mike hadn’t left the Saber once since they put in the day before. Gerry was stuck, lashed to a course that he knew would be the end of him.

  Despair, exhaustion and too much hooch had him speaking in a long slurring ramble as he explained what had been happening; the gist of which was that a lone black-sailed boat had been spotted by the scouts at Point Reyes lighthouse just as the sun was setting. The boat, a heavy fifty footer with stiff sails and rigid lines, was followed by a long, disorderly gaggle of Corsair vessels that came straggling up over the next hour.

  The scouts were shocked at just how many boats there were and were properly nervous, but they weren’t all that personally afraid because normally at night the Corsairs gave themselves plenty of sea room by heading further out into the ocean, lighting fires to keep track of their ships. That night was different. They came in close, a great mass of boats, like a giant school of enormous black sharks. They anchored almost directly beneath where the frightened scouts were hunkered down and when the Corsairs swarmed ashore to find places to sleep, they covered the beach completely.

  The scouts’ whispered radio messages were dire and nearly caused a panic on Alcatraz as the reports were foolishly allowed to spread in the form of increasingly terrifying rumors. Without the Queen’s presence people ran in circles or tried to mob the few boats at the docks which were forced to stand out in the bay to keep from being swamped.