The Queen of the Dead

by Peter Meredith

  The deck was a tremendous mess of ropes and sails, and Mike tripped just as two men came charging up out of the hold. One was lightning fast and shot Christopher in midair as he jumped across. Mike jumped to his feet and rattled off half a magazine at the two, killing them both. He then ran to the rail and saw Christopher looking at him with stupid bewilderment on his face as he sank beneath a wave.

  “Wait! Christopher, swim!” Mike screamed as he tossed aside the gun. By the time he got one foot over the rail, the boy was gone. Now there was only smoke and fire. “Damn it! Colleen? Where are you?”

  She and Kasie were clinging to the side of the new boat, neither strong enough to pull themselves over the railing. The moment he had hauled them on board he began barking orders, “Get the main raised, fast.” They had to get headway. The fire was engulfing both the Saber and the other Corsair boat and it would get them too if they couldn’t get some distance.

  Unfortunately neither Colleen nor Kasie were sailors. They managed to get the jib part of the way up before it snagged on a crossed line. Still it was enough so that a soft breeze pushed them over to the east.

  “Get the wheel,” he barked at Kasie. He had to clear away the bodies before someone got too close and noticed them. After he got two over, he realized that a crew consisting of himself and two women would surely attract notice. Quickly he hauled one of the bodies up and placed it behind the wheel, using the corpse’s own long greasy hair as rope to keep the head from falling to the side.

  He then ran below and came up with a blanket. “Hide under here,” he told Kasie. She gave him a look of disgust since she would be snuggled between the dead man’s legs and the smell was atrocious. Still she didn’t complain. They were past that point.

  Mike didn’t need to hide. His face had been blackened by soot and his clothes were ragged and bloody. He no longer looked like a sweet-faced kid and he no longer felt like one either. He felt old and tired.

  But there was no time to rest. His boat needed more touches of illusion and he arranged it as well as he could, leaving two bodies out where they could be seen, and letting the mainsail fall, untying it so that part of it trailed overboard. He made the Captain Jack, as the forty-footer was called, look as though it had been through the worst of the battle. Leaving the jib as it was he used it to coax the ship out of the smoke, on a northern course.

  By then the fight was winding down. The smoke bombs had begun to sputter and the overmatched Santas were giving up one after the other. The results were disappointing. Only ten of the Corsair ships had been sunk and the losses were offset by the eleven ships they reclaimed from the Santas, the rest having sunk.

  Soon all the ships were heading north, catching the “struggling” Captain Jack just under a span of the Bay Bridge. Mike was surrounded and had no way to fall off to the rear. He even had the captain of another ship bark at him, “Fix your jib, moron. You got a line fouled around it. What are ya, blind? And get that mainsail up before Gaida turns you inside out.”

  With the Corsairs laughing at him, they passed a quarter mile to the west of the Floating Fortress where he could see Jenn and the others standing atop the containers. No one had binoculars trained on his boat or any boat. They weren’t looking for him. He had fooled both the Corsairs and his friends.

  On the Floating Fortress there was only utter despair. They had done everything they could and it hadn’t been enough.

  “It was close,” Jillybean said. “We were very close to winning.” A part of her wanted to second guess everything she had done; every decision, every thought process, every missed opportunity. Instead, she only shrugged. “We have one action left to us. We send the Puffer and however many of those little boats we have, out to the island. From there Stu and Jenn will take what children they can and try to flee. I will stay here with the wounded and we will fight to the…”

  Her throat locked suddenly. Eve was not going to have any of it. She had no desire to run away, hobbled by a bunch of useless kids, and she certainly wasn’t going to fight to the death, not to her death at least. That was just stupid. Jillybean was barely holding on and it took a moment to master her own body. “To the death,” she finished in an anti-climatic croak.

  “I’m staying,” Stu announced, in his usual quiet manner.

  “We don’t have time for this!” Jillybean cried, her voice now brittle and high, just this side of sounding hysterical. Eve wasn’t just close now, she was there inside Jillybean’s eyes and she was opening and closing Jillybean’s hands. She could takeover anytime she wanted but seemed to be waiting for something.

  Jillybean had to hurry. “Get in the damned boat. I am your Queen, or did you forget?”

  Stu shook his head. “You were my Queen and you were great. But now…” It was his turn to choke slightly. “It’s over. There’s nothing to be queen of. So you can’t send me away. I’m staying with you.”

  She had planned for almost every contingency, except this one. It had been an assumption that Stu would just do as he was told. “I know that’s what you think, but you won’t be staying with me. You’ll be with Eve and I don’t want your last moments spent listening to her. Besides those kids need you. So, please, please get in the boat. You too, Jenn.”

  Jenn hadn’t been paying attention, she was looking back at the wreckage in the south bay and although she had binoculars dangling from a plastic strap around her neck, she was afraid to look into them. She was more afraid of seeing Mike’s body than she was of the Corsairs.

  “Maybe you should send Donna and Shaina instead,” she said.

  “Why them?” Jillybean shot back. “Why don’t I go myself? You and Stu can stay here and die for all I…” Jillybean clamped her mouth shut and squeezed her eyelids down as hard as she could, fighting Eve. “Please leave.”

  Stu let the seconds tick away before he finally spoke. “No. I’m staying. I love you, Jillian.”

  He had been dead serious which made it all the more difficult when Eve suddenly exploded in shrieking laughter. She’d been waiting for just that moment to emerge and the solemnity on Stu’s face and the fact he had called her Jillian was so outrageously delicious that Eve couldn’t control the gales exploding out of her.

  Grabbing her stomach, she fell with a hollow thud onto the roof of the container and giggled uncontrollably until she was a shade of magenta and tears streamed. “J-J-Jillian?” she said, her chest hitching. “That was great. Say it again, Stu.”

  He glared which only had her going again. When she could speak she said, “Don’t be mad, Stu old boy. She warned you. And you know what? I think I warned you, too. I warned all of you about taking up with Jillybean, but did you listen? Hell no and look where it got you.” She gestured at the bay. It was one of the sickest, saddest sights any of them had ever seen and that included Eve.

  “I gotta say, she hasn’t lost her touch,” she said with real admiration. “No one can destroy and kill on a higher level than her.”

  “Bring her back, please,” Stu asked. The glare was gone. He felt eternally tired and he didn’t have the energy to handle Eve. “The least you can do is bring her back to say goodbye properly.”

  “And would a proper goodbye also mean an admission of love on her part?” They all saw the laughter building up inside of her. It would have only taken either a glare or an effeminate “yes” on his part to send her into another fit. His tired sigh didn’t cut it and the bottled laughter came out in a snide, “She never loved you, Stu. Or you, Jenn.”

  Jenn finally turned away from the wreckage. “I’ll believe it when she says it, not you.”

  Eve shot her a harsh look. “Will you believe it when she doesn’t say I love you? Stu the lapdog has been begging for that treat for days and look where it got him? It got him fighting her battles for her, pretty much just like I said would happen. You see the truth is…”

  She paused, drawing the moment out. It didn’t matter to her that the Corsair boats were now rallying around their captain. She was
singularly focused on destroying Jillybean. “The truth is this was all planned from the moment she saw you, Jenn back in Bainbridge.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Stu said. “She’s making up stories. No one, not even Jillybean could have planned for all this to happen.”

  Eve arched an eyebrow. “She needed proof that there were indeed good people out there and Jenn in all her splendid simple naïveté was that proof. Her very existence told us that there was still a good society left in the world that protected the weak, that would fight evil if it had to.”

  Hesitantly, Stu said, “There’s still no way she could’ve foreseen this.”

  “Tell me, is Stu is short for stupid? Don’t you people practically worship her intellect? Her genius? Isn’t there some sort of rumor that she can think three steps ahead? Well, I know for a fact that is wrong. She can think ten steps ahead.” She paused again, but saw they were still not getting the obvious.

  She climbed to her feet and pointed at the Corsair ships. “Whose idea was it to take one of their ships?”

  Stu and Jenn shared an uncertain look. “Jillybean’s,” Jenn answered, “but it was the only way to get back here in time to save William and Aaron.”

  “How very convenient. It enabled her to be the hero at the very same time she led the Corsairs right to your doorstep.” Eve smiled as the little group of survivors finally began to understand. “Yes, you see it now. She needed someone to fight her battles for her. Those Bainbridge wimps were on to her so she needed new dupes to feed her appetite for destruction.”

  Jenn started to splutter, “But, but the z-zombies did the fighting. And, and the people in Sacramento…she couldn’t have known they would make her queen or about the Corsairs there. And One Shot. She couldn’t have known about you killing him.”

  “Oh, please. You told her about the horde almost right off the bat. She’d also diagnosed the disease those idiots in Sacramento were suffering from even before you left Bainbridge. And One Shot…well you don’t know who killed him, but I do. And I know why. Where would we be if he were still alive? Would we have ever gone to Sacramento?”

  Stu reached out and caught Jenn as her legs buckled. They had only ran away to Sacramento because One Shot had been murdered and Jillybean was scheduled for execution. If he had remained alive they wouldn’t have gone to Sacramento and the second battle with the Corsairs would have caught them unprepared and easily taken.

  “It was her,” Donna whispered, faint and ghost-like. “She did this. She did all of this. We would never have been attacked if it wasn’t for her.”

  The group stared, most with their mouths hanging open, some with rage in their eyes. Eve grinned from ear to ear. “Now you know how I feel,” she said. “Everyone loves her. Everyone thinks she walks on water and all that, but look at what she’s done. Look at the lives she’s wrecked. Those are the mutilated bodies of your friends and family. Look at them!”

  Everyone looked only now they did so with disgust mingled with outrage on their faces. They had been tricked, fooled into a war they never wanted. It was with hatred that they turned back to Eve who couldn’t stop beaming with happiness. “And this is why you never mess with me, Jillybean,” she said to the girl caged inside of her.

  “I should kill you,” Donna hissed.

  “What did I do?” Eve asked, complete innocence etched into her now beautiful face. “I didn’t do anything but try to warn you. It was all Jillybean. You should kill her.”

  She started to laugh, but midway through she choked on it and the broad, overdone smile disappeared, leaving behind a look of uncertainty that didn’t sit right with Jillybean’s normal confidence. With a growing dread, she peered into their eyes. Then, as if it had stung her, she flung away the radio in her hand. It had been sending the entire time so that everyone had heard.

  “Is-is what she said true?” Stu asked. “Did you do this on purpose?”

  “Of course it’s true!” Donna screamed. “She spelled it out and…and it all fits. It all fits perfectly. She used us.”

  Jillybean took a deep breath and without looking up she nodded. She swallowed, thickly twice before admitting, “I did use you. Everything she said was true, except, I didn’t kill One Shot. And, and she left out that what I did was for the greater good.”

  “You sacrificed us!” Donna raged.

  Again Jillybean nodded. “Yes, I did. I did it for the greater good. Someone had to stop the Corsairs before it was too late. Someone had to risk…” Her eyes flicked up to Stu’s face. “Someone had to risk everything to stop them. You couldn’t see it, tucked away safe and sound like you were, but they were growing and growing, and I knew they would soon be unstoppable.”

  “So you sacrificed us?” Jenn asked, tears in her eyes. “You let Mike sail away to die and you actually think that was a good thing? Really?” Jenn reared back a hand and slapped Jillybean across the face. The blow had been both slow and obvious, but Jillybean let it land. It was the least she deserved.

  Jenn knocked her down with the stunning slap and now stood over her, furious anger making her shake uncontrollably. “You talk about risk? What in the hell did you ever risk? Huh? You risked nothing for your little war. You haven’t fired a single bullet this whole time, except when you shot One Shot and he was unarmed. I can’t believe…” She stood back suddenly as if Jillybean were diseased. “I can’t believe I called you queen.”

  She walked in a big circle seething in such anger that she missed the Corsairs gathering their fleets into three parts again. They were just about to come on again when two of the boats collided sending up a scream of wood that could be heard all over the bay.

  No one other than Jenn seemed to have heard the scream. They were all still uselessly staring at Jillybean. “Stu,” Jenn said. “We can’t sit here.” Stu, always quiet and still, now looked like a carved totem of misery. “Stu!” Jenn clapped her hands, breaking through the fugue-like state he found himself in. “Take Donna and whoever will fit on the boats over to that island. Then get the children to safety. That’s the most important thing. Everyone else collect what ammo you can find. We might have been tricked into fighting someone else’s battle but the Corsairs won’t see it that way. I don’t think we want to be alive when this is all done.”

  No one would look at Jillybean as they scurried to do Jenn’s bidding. Stu was the only one who hadn’t moved. He was so shattered in mind and spirit that he didn’t think he had the strength to.

  “I think you should get going, Stu,” Jillybean said in a whisper. They were four feet from each other but it felt much, much further, as if there was a gulf or a chasm between them that neither could cross. She was just as weak as he was and her head was spinning from the slap. Filled with apathy and a hundred-pound weight of self-loathing, she struggled to stand.

  She found she couldn’t look at Stu and so she watched Jenn as she prepared to send off the first boats. Jenn was the youngest one there and yet she had discovered a strength of will. “If nothing else,” Jillybean said, “I have made a true queen out of her.”

  “So you really never loved me.”

  Finally, she forced her eyes toward him. He might have been made of stone for all the emotion he showed. “I loved you more than I thought possible,” she told him, “but I knew this would happen in the end. I knew we were doomed.”

  He still wouldn’t look up. “We didn’t have to be. You could have told me the truth. Or better yet, you could have been…I don’t know, normal maybe.”

  “I’ve never been normal. I don’t even know how to act normal. Like right now, what would a normal girl do?”

  A shrug. “It would be nice if you’d say you’re sorry without adding ‘but’ to it. That would be a start.”

  “A start to what?” He shrugged in answer. “And would you believe me if I said sorry?” His next shrug was expected and was probably a lie. She sighed. Just as she had foreseen, they were doomed. It’s why she had resisted her feelings for him for so long. Sh
e had told herself not to fall for him and she had anyway and now she felt gutted, broken inside, ruined.

  A huge part of her wanted to die, which really was the easiest thing to do in her circumstance. It would be for the best.

  “I know you won’t believe anything I say. After all, words can be meaningless. Actions speak louder than words and bombs speak louder than anything.”

  He blinked, uncertain he had heard her correctly. As he started to ask what she meant she stepped right up to him and kissed him. After everything that had happened he wanted to pull away, however his heart, broken as it was wouldn’t let him. The kiss was frantic on her part and terribly confusing on his. It was the wrong kind of kiss, though he was sure he didn’t know what the right kind could have been just then.

  “I can give you a half hour head start. Make it count,” she said, when their lips parted.

  Too stunned for words, he could only stare as she went to the edge of the container and dropped down to the little lane between it and the next. With his head spinning he tried to follow, losing her after only a few turns. Not knowing what he would say or do when he caught her, he went in circles before he wised up and climbed to the top of a container. From there he finally spotted her at the back ramp. Over one shoulder was her bag of bombs and in her other hand was a white sheet.

  She could feel his eyes on her and she turned to wave, even managing to smile, in spite of the glares around her. Jenn’s was the coldest—a withering ice-blue stare.

  Jenn recognized the heavy bag. “Those are our bombs. I guess I didn’t make myself clear. You’re banished. You get nothing, not even a gun. Now go away. Go die somewhere. Try to have some dignity when you do it.”

  “Dignity? That’s a good word, a very good word. I wish I could…” Jillybean faltered, knowing that Jenn didn’t care what she wished and wouldn’t listen to another apology or explanation. Jenn would never let herself realize that the Corsairs would’ve come for them eventually and found them weak and easy pickings.