The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  Jillybean did a double take, seeing Jenn not as the sweet girl she was but something horribly changed. Her eyes had gone to slits and there was a nasty knowing look in them that went perfectly with her treacherous, cunning smile.

  “No, I don’t! Whose side are you on?” Jenn shrank back as if slapped and the evil look dissipated like smoke. “Sorry,” Jillybean said, passing a hand over her face. “I’m just…my head is spinning is all. And really, the smoke won’t help Mike.”

  As always when Jillybean opened up Jenn’s mind and read her hidden secrets, it made her feel utterly naked. It was true, she wanted the fires going for Mike’s sake. Even with the Corsairs bearing down on them she couldn’t stop craning her head south. Each glance back robbed her of hope and strength.

  “He knows the way,” Jillybean said. “Come on, we need to get down from here.” Already bullets were flying.

  The forty-foot Wave Master was leading the western squadron, knifing through the water straight at the Floating Fortress. At three hundred yards it opened up a steady fire that rang and tinged off the containers.

  In answer there came a thin crackling as four or five rifles opened up from the defenders. It wasn’t a barrage by any means. They were well controlled and well aimed shots from long range rifles mounting powerful scopes. Among the fighters was William Tafney who winced in pain with every shot and could only hope that his stitches were holding as he fired.

  Next to him, Stu was so deliberate, he took only two shots a minute. They simply did not have bullets to waste on misses.

  A mile away on Treasure Island, Gerry the Greek, seeing seventy ships coming his way begged to light the fires, sending Jillybean into a rage. “Don’t you dare. I’ll kill you myself if you do! Do. Not. Light. Them!” she thundered into the radio.

  Lois Blanchard, who had not yet recovered from the terror she had experienced on the Marin Headlands, and who was now in charge of fifty people on the island’s eastern shore—a long open expanse that looked impossible to defend—begged, “Please, do it, Gerry. It’s our only chance.”

  Hearing this, Jillybean, her eyes growing crazed, clenched a fist so tightly she dug crescent moons into her palms.

  Jenn saw her mind was on the brink of failing and jumped in front of her, saying, “Look at me. Focus on me, Jillybean. We need you, not Sadie and certainly not Eve. Explain things to them. Is there a reason why they should wait? If so, explain it to them. It’s what Jillybean would do, right? And you are Jillybean. Jillybean.”

  “I-I am,” she said, letting out a long shaky breath and unclenching her hand. She stared at it, trying to connect what she was seeing with what she was feeling, which was an overall numbness that she associated with “fading away” from her own body.

  The stress on her was immense while the odds of victory were tiny. She was going to die soon. They all were and it was her fault; Jillybean’s fault. It made her not want to be Jillybean anymore.

  “But you have a job to do,” Sadie whispered, using Jillybean’s lips. “You started this and now you have to see it through. It’ll be okay. I’m with you.”

  “Yes. Listen to that one,” Jenn said, desperately. “Was it Sadie? Yes? She’s right. You have to see it through.”

  Jillybean opened and closed her hand a few times, trying to get the feel of it back. “Okay. Sorry. I’m here.” She remembered the radio in her still numb left hand. “This is Jillybean. It’s uh, it’s uh…the reason we aren’t lighting the fires is because they’re only testing us. I know because I have broken their codes. It wasn’t all that difficult. They only use so many flags so each one can only represent so many letters or letter combinations. Red and blue flags are vowels. When they’re preceded by white pendants they’re…”

  With gun blazing and the ships kicking up white foam along their hulls, Jenn grabbed her arm. “Maybe just give them the condensed version.”

  “Of course. The gist of their messages is that they’re testing our defenses. Thus it makes no sense to give away our hand. So please, listen to my orders. Don’t light the fires just yet.”

  This made sense and there was a general murmuring of agreement before the radios fell silent.

  Nothing else in their world was silent. The bay was alive with the rattle of gunfire that rose, growing louder and louder. It could have been louder, still. Neither side was putting everything they had into the battle. The Corsairs were merely probing while the Queen’s defenders limited their shots, afraid to run out of bullets.

  When the western squadron came closer to the Floating Fortress, it split in two with a file heading down each side of the barge. There were a few screams of panic, but for the most part the defenders held their fear in check, mostly thanks to Stu Currans. The grim, generally silent Hillman kept up a relentless roar: “Take them down! Let them have it! Don’t let up. Don’t let up!”

  Although half of the defenders wouldn’t come out of hiding the others did as he asked.

  Hiding in, on, and around the containers, they kept up a steady, accurate fire, aiming for the captains of each boat. It proved to be a highly effective defense since sailboats were delicate machines. Without anyone at the wheel for even a few seconds, boats suddenly turned or lost headway. A number of them slewed into each other. Sometimes with a loud crash that could be heard over the din, and sometimes with an inaudible thud that could be felt but not heard.

  Some boats became locked together as booms lanced into rigging. Others sank, one with amazing suddenness—it hit another boat side-on, broke away showing a tremendous gash in its side and then went down by the head in less than a minute, sending two trapped men and a female slave to a watery grave .

  With boats going in every direction, the attack failed altogether. Along with the four that sunk, six boats were utterly abandoned by their crews as the rest turned tail leaving fifty-three Corsairs in the water to drown or be eaten by the zombies that were filling the bay, drawn by the noise and commotion.

  For once, people cheered as the dead ate their fill.

  The probing attack on Treasure Island was far more successful. Although the Corsairs lost two boats and had close to fifty casualties, the defense proved porous and soft. With only a low, hastily built rock wall ringing the island and far weaker leadership, the defenders suffered over sixty casualties, something they could ill afford.

  Worse than the casualties was the weakness shown by the defenders. Many hadn’t fired a shot and had only cowered uselessly, while others, overcome by panic fled to the interior of the island and hid.

  When the attack on the barge ended, Jillybean was the first to rush up to the top of the containers. She stared at the carnage she had wrought: the bay was littered with floating bodies and wrecked ships. It was ghastly and yet all around her was excited cheering and what sounded like childish laughter, though the latter might have been coming from inside her own head.

  A second later Jenn joined her. The girl was one of the few who was not cheering.

  Once again the striking similarity between the two was apparent as their hair whipped and spun, twisting into each other, connecting them at least physically. Mentally and emotionally they were worlds apart. Jenn stared to the south where the bay remained stubbornly empty, while Jillybean’s eyes were drawn across to the island.

  Through the binoculars she could see rivers of blood running from beneath the wall to dribble into the ocean, and there were mangled bodies lying among the rocks. And there were lonely body parts: a stump of an arm flung off by itself or a foot poised, as if on the other side of the wall someone was casually reclining.

  Your fault, your fault, your fault…

  “Where’s Stu,” she asked Jenn in a slurred whisper. Her lips were fading into darkness along with the rest of her.

  She was sure she had whispered the question since she didn’t have the strength for more, but somehow he had heard her. He was suddenly there, talking to her, looking into her eyes. He kept calling her name over and over. Even with him so close
she was disappearing and this time it wasn’t because Eve was fighting to get out, it was because Jillybean wanted to hide.

  Then Stu was kissing her and it wasn’t so much the feel of his lips that brought her back as it was the taste of him and the scent. He had a very manly smell that was uniquely his. Had she been blind she could have picked him out by scent alone. That scent evoked images and memories, and before she knew it, she was back.

  “Hi,” she said. She wanted to say more and she wanted to breathe him in, or kiss him with her real lips, however over his broad shoulder she could see the Corsair fleet gathering. Signal flags were going up and down from the lead boat as fast as they could be knotted in place.

  “The Black Captain is in a tearing hurry,” she remarked, not at all surprised. The attack on the barge was yet another bitter defeat and couldn’t be offset by the ease with which the eastern fleet had had things. “There has to be talk among the surviving captains. They have to be on the verge of mutiny.” It was almost the only hope left to her. “If we can just sting them again we might be able to win,” she whispered before looking through the binoculars once more.

  They almost weren’t needed. There was only one logical place to attack. “They’ll be going to the island next,” Jillybean said. “Light the fires, Gerry!” She practically yelled into the radio. “Now’s the time. Light the fires and stretch out the buoys. Are you there, Gerry?”

  “Yes,” he sounded tired. “Light the fires, right.”

  “And stretch out the buoys and then bring us closer. Repeat those orders.”

  He did so breathlessly as he ran across the island to help. “Lois! Did you hear? Light the fires! Lois!” She didn’t answer and his fear doubled. Halfway across he saw smoke billowing up. “Lois?” he asked into the radio.

  “No this is Lindy. Lindy Smith I’m a hillgirl. Jenn knows me.”

  Half a dozen adults around the bay gaped at their radios. “Where’s Lois?” Donna asked, her voice shaking and warbling with more than just static.

  “She got shotted in the tummy and she told me to be on charge of the radio. She says I’m real good at talking, which is kinda funny since she used to say I talked too much and Aaron says I’m too small to mess around with fire so he’s doing it. Lighting the fires I mean, but he’s not doing it real good since it’s only smoking. Boy, it’s like smoking real bad.”

  Aaron Altman wasn’t lighting normal fires. In essence he was lighting hundred pound smoke bombs that were emitting clouds of smoke thicker than any San Francisco fog. These dense clouds rolled across the bay with the wind. By itself the smoke was nothing but a hindrance, however beyond it Jillybean had contrived a second line of buoys.

  During the first attack, the thirteen buoys had floated in what appeared to be harmless disarray west of the island. If the eight hundred feet of chain linking them could be pulled tight, it would form a barrier that couldn’t be breached.

  Gerry, seeing the fires going nicely, ran to the chain where a couple of dozen people were hauling with all of their sickly strength. Many of the defenders of the island were the still weak people from Sacramento. They barely had the strength to haul the buoys into a straight line, but when it was done the taut chain disappeared into the smoke and the island’s western flank was more or less secure.

  “Now for the other one!” Gerry yelled.

  On the other side of the island was another line. This one was half chain and half of rope. It ran out to the Floating Fortress and when it was pulled tight, it would drag the barge to within six hundred feet of the island, allowing for both supporting fire as well as a second chain to impede the boats.

  It was the last arrow in Jillybean’s bag of tricks and should have stung the Corsairs yet again. The only problem was that the Black Captain had not waited to form his fleet into divisions. As soon as he saw the smoke he ordered his boats to attack.

  Without any central leadership, most of the captains chose to steer well clear of the smoke. They rushed down towards the gap between the island and the barge, and once more, captains, or really anyone at the wheel of the boats were targeted and the first fourteen ships were sent spinning out of control and a great log jam occurred. But then the 39-foot sloop, Dead Rise, its hull riddled with holes and its sails in tatters, broke through and charged down the gap.

  Ahead of it were the forty-three women who were still doing everything they could to heave a hundred tons of metal across the water. A rattle of automatic fire from the Dead Rise killed nine of them and the rest, screaming in panic, fled inland.

  Someone on board tried to take the wheel so they could make it to the island. Stu shot him dead and the Dead Rise drifted lazily on south where it eventually sank.

  The Floating Fortress also drifted away, but not before eleven more ships became essentially rudderless under the accurate fire from the barge.

  In frustration, the Black Captain sent twenty ships into the smoke on the far side of the island where they promptly hit the chain. With only the slowly dying Lois Blanchard with him, resting her head in his lap, Gerry the Greek took up one of only two rifles fitted with an ATN thermal scope and began firing with cool deliberation into the smoke.

  With the scope, he could see his targets perfectly.

  He was so coldly deliberate that it was some time before the Corsairs who were stuck on the chain even knew he was killing them without mercy. When they realized it they sprayed bullets everywhere, uselessly as it turned out. Gerry kept shooting them and about the time Lois died, the sixty-four survivors in the boats took to the water and tried to swim away.

  By then the battle seemed to have bogged down. Thirty or so boats were drifting in a muddle in the gap while another forty had broken off. Jillybean seemed to have inflicted the very sting she had hoped—only just as a victory cry was being raised, a sweeping wind pushed the jam of boats towards the island.

  There were still over two hundred men cowering in the holds of those boats and when they felt the rocks scraping the bottom of their hulls, they leapt up, eager to get to land where they could fight back. At the same time the huge smoke-bombs were finally burning themselves out.

  Now, the course of the battle changed. Corsairs swept out of the boats and in ten minutes the island’s defense began to fall apart. The defenders had been fighting with half their mind intent on running away. A concerted counterattack might have saved the day. Instead they fled south in terror to Yerba Buena which was a much smaller island attached by a narrow causeway to Treasure Island.

  Now there was nowhere left to run, not enough people to fight and even if there were, the twenty or so guns had barely four hundred rounds of ammo to use. Things weren’t much better on the Floating Fortress. Half the defenders were dead and the chain holding the barge in place had been cut. They were drifting south with Corsair boats going in every direction.

  The only person who dared to keep her head up was Jenn Lockhart. She hadn’t stopped searching for the Saber and now she saw it, racing in the distance, heading towards them as fast it could. Behind it were twenty-three high-masted boats with glorious black sails.

  She began to cry and Donna Polston, a bullet in her arm, mistook the tears for happiness.

  “It’s the Santas! Mike had brought the Santas!” Donna yelled. It sure looked that way, however Mike wasn’t leading the Santas, he was running from them.

  Chapter 44

  If Mike had known he was their last hope, he might have puked into the bay. His mission had been plagued with bad luck since he’d seen the red sunrise. It started with his recruits. When he had asked for volunteers for a dangerous mission, one person had stepped up: Colleen White.

  Stu had made things worse by saying, “Don’t take any fighters. I need everyone who can handle a gun.”

  Mike was stuck with two very weak and still somewhat sick women from Sacramento, three Islanders who were just barely teens and Colleen who smiled or laughed at everything he said and was so clingy that it was a blessing when she became seasi
ck.

  A few miles south of Yerba Buena at an ugly, industrial shipping area called Hunters Pointe, he unloaded all of the crates that had been stacked on board as well as three of his crew.

  Since all of them were less than ideal, it was difficult to choose which three to keep and which to leave behind. Although he would have dearly liked to leave Colleen, she couldn’t swim which was the only prerequisite for their mission. He left two of the younger teens and one of the older women behind and because of the number of zombies flocking north, he made sure the teens had crossbows and the woman had a pistol before setting sail once more.

  Light airs dogged the Saber all the way to Palo Alto as did sea sickness. Along with Colleen, the Sacramento woman Kasie King held onto the rail with weak hands, her limp ash-blonde hair hanging in front of her face, hiding the vomit that came up every ten minutes or so.

  Only thirteen year old Christopher Feltner, an Islander Mike had known since he was a toddler was immune to the constant motion. The other two were worse than useless. Colleen especially so. She could barely stand and so Mike put her in “charge” of communications which meant she was to answer the radio. During one of her more violent gastronomical upheavals, she accidentally dropped it in the bay.

  From then on they felt terribly alone. They had no idea what was happening back home with the Corsairs and it was four agonizing, anxious hours before they even made it to Palo Alto.

  With no choice but to follow the plan, Mike put on a display of sailing ineptitude that he thought would have no equal—then the Santas took to the sea. They spent an hour getting twenty-three boats ready. An hour. They spent so long that Mike had to fake being dismasted simply to have an excuse for not gliding over the horizon.

  Then when the Santas did put out, it was in such a chaotic manner that for a few minutes Mike wondered if they weren’t just pretending to be that bad. Half the boats sagged so far to leeward that they were in serious trouble of running onto the eastern shore.