Generation z the queen o.., p.30
Generation Z_The Queen of War, page 30
“Who’s in there? Nathan? What are you doing?” She walked right up the boat and began pounding on its hull. “Get out here right this second! All of you.”
Nathan inched his head up from the cabin and it was hard to tell who he was more afraid of, the queen staring coldly up at him or Jenn looking ready to drag him off the boat and pummel him. “Stu tol’ us to stay put. No, no he ordered us to stay put. And we weren’t just doin’ nothin’ neither. We got all sorts of wounded that we’s been a takin’ care of.”
The deck was awash in blood, which brought Eve up to the surface. You’ve lost. The battle is over. You don’t stand a chance. Run away, Jillybean. Run away. Ernest has foreseen all of…
“No,” Jillybean hissed through gritted teeth. Louder, she addressed, Nathan, asking, “How many of your wounded are ambulatory?” He answered with a slow-witted, Huh? “How many can walk and how many need to be carried?”
As if they had all the time in the world, he drawled out, “Well, let me see. Manny got himself a grazed-sorta wound on his arm, which he says burns like a som-bitch. And…”
The gunfire in the prison suddenly stopped and the silence was a hundred times worse than the shooting.
Jillybean felt her heart dying. “Never mind,” she snapped at Nathan. “Jenn get up there and straighten this out. I need every able body out here in two minutes. We will take care of the wounded as soon as the battle is over.”
Jenn cast a look up at the prison, where thunderous gunfire rolled down on them and flashes of light could be seen coming from its depths. She didn’t immediately climb up and Jillybean had to give her a push. Jenn began cursing and barking orders as she practically flew up the side of the boat.
Certain that Jenn had the situation in hand, Jillybean turned to Shaina and Aaron. “There’s a good fifteen bottles of alcohol back on the Captain Jack. They’re in the storage lockers under the benches by the wheel. Grab all you can find and get back here as fast as possible.”
Nathan, wearing a guilty look, had just climbed down. She sent him back up onto the Tempest to cut down the sails. When Manny groaned his way down with a hole through his arm, Jillybean took one look at the wound, declared him fit for battle, and sent him to the Captain Jack to tear down its sails as well.
She didn’t have an army left, but the Corsairs didn’t know that. She just needed to make them think she did. With a sudden burst of optimism, she countermanded the orders she’d given William Trafny to prepare a boat for escape. Soon she had assembled a tiny battalion consisting of cowards, children and the walking wounded.
It would have to do.
Designating a partner to each, she assigned spots for them around the prison approximately sixty yards apart. Without radios, signal flags or even enough people to use as messengers, Jillybean could only give out a single order: “Do what I do and keep the fires burning.”
Because she didn’t trust him, she had partnered with Manny. “Scrounge for wood or anything that’ll burn. And…” She pointed the Sig Sauer at him. “And be quick about it. Don’t make me go looking for you.”
He ran off and she wrapped her shredded hunk of sheet around a scraggly, little shrub, poured some of the moonshine onto it and set it on fire. Seconds later, fires flared into life to her left and right, and then more flames appeared.
“That’s right!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Come on! Give them a rebel yell.” Weird wailing hollers came out of the night. Jillybean thought the screams were weak and thin. She yelled again and, in a strange echo, the screams ran around the prison.
She lit a second bush on fire and shot her gun once at the prison. A few people also fired their weapons while others hid, thinking the battle had begun. Jillybean didn’t have much more of a plan than this. They were too few and too weak to attack. All they could do was stage a bluff.
Manny returned, huffing and puffing, with an armful of clothes he had scavenged from an apartment building. Jillybean didn’t hesitate and lit these as well. “Get more! Light the island on fire!” she cried. “On fire! On fire!” she chanted.
This was taken up by the ring of people. It went on for a minute before there was a sudden cry from one little group on the edge of the circle. There was fear and then excitement. Colleen White suddenly appeared out of the darkness.
“Are we attacking? Mike’s in there and maybe Stu, also. I-I didn’t have a gun, so I ran back to get everyone else.”
Everyone else included the crews of the Rapier and the Red Pill, which doubled the size of Jillybean’s battalion. Unfortunately, they came without bullets or guns. They still couldn’t attack, but they could make a great ruckus. More fires were lit until the entire prison was ringed with flames.
Jillybean had her people dance and chant: Give up! Give up! Give up! and the more they did, the more confidence they gained until it almost seemed like a party was going on.
Dark shadows could be seen in the windows. They were like children poking their noses out from behind living room curtains after a stranger rang the doorbell.
Jillybean could sense their fear. It was time to demand their surrender. “Manny, find Nathan and get back here, quickly.” When they returned, she shoved empty guns into their hands and said, “Follow me and don’t say a word, just try to look tough.”
Grabbing a branch of a shrub, she lit it and marched directly to the main doors to the prison, which she pounded on with a rock.
The Corsairs had seen her coming; someone was behind the door. “Whatchu want?”
“You will surrender now,” Jillybean informed the hidden person. “You will surrender or we will light the prison on fire and shoot you like rats as you come running out. You have one minute to decide.”
“We have two of your men and we’ll kill them if you don’t leave.”
Jillybean’s heart leaped—Stu was alive! She pushed the gush of fear and love back down and with precise calmness, she looked down at her watch. “Forty-five seconds left. If they are killed, I think it would be advisable that you kill yourselves next. Trust me, you’ll wish you were dead.”
There was a long pause in which Jillybean stood with complete self-assurance, her watch and arm cocked in front of her cold face.
“I want to give up, Tam,” someone else said. “There’s hundreds of ‘em. We can’t win.”
“Shut up,” Tam seethed. “Don’t listen to him, Lady. We need some reassurances before we do anything.”
Jillybean’s eyes dipped to her watch. “Twenty seconds. I’ve given you all the reassurances you’re going to get. You should be glad we’re not Corsairs. We’re civilized people. Ten seconds.”
She pointed Manny and Nathan towards the wall so that they wouldn’t be targets. She went to one side of the door and waved the burning branch as if in signal for attack.
“Wait!” cried the one man. “I want to give up.” There was a clatter as a gun was dropped. It was followed by the sound of more. In seconds, the Corsairs had come hurrying out, their hands in the air.
“Those two guys are still down in the cell block,” Tam said, speaking quickly, his eyes twitching. “We never got to them, okay? So, if they’re dead…it’s…it’s…”
Jillybean’s pistol came up to point into his chest. It had happened without her knowing and she heard herself say, “It’s what? Not your fault because you missed?” He could say nothing to this and nor could he say anything when he saw the lowly group he had surrendered to. The Corsairs could only gape, red-faced as they were frisked and tied up.
Now that the battle was won, Jenn could not be stopped from racing down into the prison to find Mike and Stu. Jillybean went more slowly, afraid that she would find Stu dead and equally afraid to find his judging eyes boring into her. He managed to find the perfect middle ground between the two: he was unconscious.
She went right to work, hooking up two large gauge IVs before breaking out the needle and thread and patching him back together. By the time she was done, he looked like the sails on the Captain Jack, before they had been torn down and burnt, that is.
Mike had been nicked a few times and the stitches in his throat had sprung some leaks, but he wasn’t in a bad way; Jenn found him an excellent patient to practice on since he couldn’t cry out at all and only rarely moaned.
Their new Corsair captives carried the two men out of the prison and into the last of the night, which showed only a few misty stellar lights. They soon gave way to a new sky that looked as if a deep purple shade had been drawn down over the stars.
Jillybean was tired and should have been optimistic. Stu was already coming around in a groggy but growly manner, Alcatraz had been taken with only a few deaths, if the Corsair “volunteers” were discounted, that is, and it turned out the Rapier was in fact salvageable. But a gloom had settled over her.
I know why, Sadie told her. You’re barely scraping together wins, and with each you get weaker.
“And it only takes one loss, however small to end this entirely. So, what do I do?”
Sadie didn’t answer—Jenn was watching. “A good night, all in all,” Jillybean said to Jenn. “But we got lucky.”
Jenn looked away briefly. “We. There can’t be a ‘we.’ Colleen has been spreading rumors around about you…the true rumors. And now everyone knows that you started all of this. I’m going to have to officially arrest you. And this time, there will be no escape.”
Chapter 30
Eve
To keep her from escaping, Jillybean was stripped of her black clothes and given a velvet pink warmup suit. She was then imprisoned in the maximum security wing of Alcatraz, where the cold went deep into the foundation and chilled the dank, urine-smelling air.
Even though a fire was started in the hall outside her cell, it couldn’t permeate the heavy, rusted metal door and when she wasn’t cocooned in a nest of old blankets, her teeth chattered and her lips turned blue.
It was a gloomy, frightful place where ancient evil festered, where hatreds and jealousy and fears bred and flourished. It was a place where the very concept of goodness and purity were constantly under assault.
The walls were seeped, not just in mold, but also in the memories of murderers and the ghosts of rapists and sadists. Eerie, demented sounds followed the pipes down into her cell night and day. It was like the prison was speaking to her in dark whispers.
Jillybean was rarely herself. Eve dominated. In fact, Eve thrived. Everything nasty about her tiny eight-by-ten cell amplified her aggrieved sense of self. It gave her power and stoked her desires.
Sometime in that first wretchedly cold night she came to the decision that she would be queen again. Ernie said it was preordained. The evidence of this was everywhere and started with the fact that she was still alive. By all the laws governing the role of conqueror and conquered, Eve should’ve been put to the sword without hesitation.
That she was still alive was a sign of Jenn’s weakness. And, if she’s too weak-willed to kill her greatest rival, then she’s too weak to be queen, Ernest told her.
“And when I get my throne back, I won’t make that same mistake.” In the light of her one candle, she swung her arm in a vicious arc, imagining a curved sword in her hand.
Who she was jailed with seemed like another manifestation of her destiny. Kept in three of the dungeon-like cells around her were the eighteen Corsairs who had been captured in the last two battles.
They were sullen and crude. Half the time they were secretive, conspiring in hissing whispers about how they were going to escape, or telling each other what horrible torture they would inflict on their captors once they were free. The rest of the time, they screamed down the cellblock about their innocence in all matters, including how they were angels who’d been forced into the Corsair life. “We’re not really like that, deep inside.”
They also made a laughable attempt to scare Eve. “Wait ’til we get out, missy,” Tam said. He was a big, thick-armed Corsair with two chipped front teeth and a habit of tonguing them constantly. “You’ll pay for what you done, tricking us an all. You ever been raped before?”
“Yes,” she answered, blandly.
“Did you like it? Huh?”
She’d never given it much thought. “A little, yeah. It made me a stronger…person.” She’d hesitated since being an actual person was a concept that was hard to define. The whole idea was somewhat unsettling and so she reverted to something she knew well. “Do you want to know what I did to the guy who raped me? I stabbed him over and over and over until my arm got tired. I stabbed his junk with my hunting knife so many times it looked like dog meat. That was fun, but not nearly as fun as the raping I gave you Corsairs.”
A high giggle escaped her. “Ooh, you got it good. The corpses of your friends are stinking up the bay from one end to the other.” She stuck her pert nose to the small barred window that was set in the metal door and sniffed loudly. “I can smell them even down here. That’s where you’re going to end up. All of you will be in the bay soon enough. Crabs popping out your eyes; gulls sitting on your bloated bellies, picking through them, looking for the sweet meats.”
This shut them up and a sulking, depressed silence followed. One of them rattled the door in frustration, making Eve giggle again.
“What about you?” Tam asked. He pushed his pockmarked face to the bars. “Huh? I bet you end up out in the bay before us.”
She pictured herself floating face down in the water, a hole in the back of her head leaking blood.
That won’t happen if you stick with me.
Eve nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned to see that she wasn’t alone in her cell. Ernest Smith lounged against one wall. “I got this, Ernie. I don’t need Jillybean’s supposed smarts.”
We’ll see, won’t we. Chances are, that filthy Corsair is right.
“No way. You see, killing a Corsair is easy. No, it’s easier than easy. It’s…” She only realized just that that she was talking loud enough for everyone to hear. She quickly pretended to be talking to Tam. “Jenn will have to kill you, Tam, to show everyone that she has the power over life and death. At least that’s what I would do and it’s what she…I mean it’s what I taught her in a roundabout way. But killing a queen, that’s a whole other thing.”
We’ll see, Ernie said, and faded away, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
It was quiet for a minute as everyone considered Eve’s words. Then Mark Leney said, “You’d think it would be easier to kill another queen. You know because of, like competition and crap like that.”
Across the hall from Eve, Tam had his hands dangling easily through the bars of his cell. “Naw. I seen this new queen. She’s a kid. She doesn’t got the guts.”
This statement had the other Corsairs sitting up on their bunks. A desperate Leney asked, “You saying she won’t kill us then?”
“Naw,” Tam said. “The bitch is right about one thing, the new queen will kill us. But I bet she kills you, too, Your Highness.” His sarcasm made a few of the less frightened Corsairs laugh. “I think that maybe you’ll get a little poisoned something, something in your oatmeal one of these days.”
“If I thought that for even a second, I’d be over the next horizon by morning. And yes, I can escape if I choose to. They couldn’t have been more obvious with the key. Jillybean has the shape memorized. But it won’t be necessary since I’m supposed to have a public trial. I can picture it. The evidence of my guilt is scant and will be easily outweighed by what I can offer. Does anyone think two-hundred frightened little hut-dwellers will want to take a chance on a new and very inexperienced queen?”
Leney cleared his throat and said, “They might. You never know. I mean that’s an awful bet to lose. It could be your neck getting stretched right along with ours. Picture that.”
“After destroying you schmucks in battle after battle? After showing that I can make bombs and medicine? After saving who knows how many of them? No. It’s been a day and they’re probably begging for me to be reinstated. And what did I do anyways? Nothing. It was all that damned Jillybean.”
They all knew how crazy the “Mad Queen” was and a few of the Corsairs sniggered, making Eve want to tear down the door and beat them to death with it. “Laugh all you want, but I’ll be queen by tomorrow and when I am, I’ll make sure to postpone your deaths long enough to hear you each begging to die.”
“We’re not laughing,” Leney said, quickly. “No one is laughing. We wouldn’t do that. Not to you. Not to the rightful queen, right guys?” His kissing up, and the reason behind it was so obvious that even the dimmest of the Corsairs caught on and each agreed with one too many Your Highnesses.
“Enough!” Eve barked. “So, all of you wish to have me as your queen? Interesting. You know I plan on destroying the Corsairs? Well, actually, I plan on destroying the Black Captain and becoming queen in his place. Look what I did to his mighty armada with this bunch of weaklings. Picture what I could do with the Corsairs as my army. Bainbridge would fall, as would the Santas and the Guardians. From there, it’ll be east until we have all of America.”
“We can help you, Your Highness,” Leney said. “Just get us the hell out of here and we’re yours.”
“No. You’ll be mine now. I want each of you to swear it and I want each of you to realize what the penalty for crossing me is.”
Leney cleared his throat again. “I guess you’ll kill us, right?”
“Yes, and your friends, and your girlfriends. I’ll kill anyone you’ve ever smiled at. Ask the Azael if you think I’m kidding. Oh right, they’re all dead because of me.”
“I swear it, Your Highness,” Leney was quick to say. “I’m your man. I swore it before and I’ll swear it again.” The other Corsairs were quick to agree, each taking turns to swear allegiance.
Eve rubbed her hands together in dark glee. “Good, now prove it. Prove your complete loyalty. I want one man from each cell to be killed. Choose however you wish, but know this, any hesitation will be judged accordingly and your loyalty doubted. You may begin.”
