The Queen of the Dead Read online

  If Mike had said that to Jenn, she would have let him kiss her right there in front of everyone.

  Wishing it was his hand she was holding, she sighed and kept trudging. By the time they got back to the safety of the hilltop, it was dark and well past when Jenn normally ate dinner. “What do you say to some…” She looked into her pantry and didn’t see much staring back. She had emptied a lot of it feeding Mike for a week, then used up more on the trip north, and since she had got back she’d been sharing with Jillybean, who could put it away as well as any man.

  Just then Jillybean was standing in front of her open bag, looking over notes on a concept concerning courage she had written a few nights back. Was courage a finite pool that emptied slowly with every dip, a well that could be called upon whenever needed, or was it like the edge of a knife, keen at first but dulled quickly with use, and if so could it be resharpened in certain circumstances?

  It had been Jenn’s courage on display on the night of the battle that had sparked the mental and quite singular conversation with herself. The girl had exhibited a well-grounded degree of courage on the trip north; what might be considered “average” courage. Taking up that flaming pendant and charging out into an army of the dead had taken a great deal more courage, almost super-human courage.

  Jillybean had given it quite some thought, but just then, in the midst of her stupor, she shoved the papers aside after staring blankly at them for a few seconds. “I’m too tired for this. And I’m too tired to eat so don’t bother, Jenn.” She dug past more papers, past a layer of black shirts, another of panties… “Ah, finally.” Somehow the bottle of amphetamines had gone from sitting on top of the bag to the very bottom.

  She popped two of the pills as Jenn thrust two jars at her. “It’s pretty much all I have, sorry. Your choice is grape or pear and you have to choose one.” Jillybean chose the jar of grape preserves thinking she could use something sweet just then. Unfortunately, the preserves had been made from wine grapes and not Concord grapes; they were more tart than sweet and the concentrated tannins left her tongue feeling puckered.

  “This needs to go with something,” she said pushing the jar away and getting to her feet. “But for the life of me I don’t know what.” She swayed briefly. The uppers were kicking in. Her eyes were wide and unfortunately still yellow and in the light of the guttering candle, her skin, once nearly perfectly white also seemed to have an odd hue to it.

  Jenn noticed it, a nervous smile plucking at the corners of her lips. She was worried that no matter what Jillybean said, the disease could bounce from person to person.

  When she remarked on it, Jillybean explained, “It’s just the jaundice. Too many pills, don’t worry. Hey, I have to go make sure One Shot doesn’t die and I have to work on the generator.”

  “The what?”

  Jillybean laughed as if Jenn had been joking, and ignored the question. “I’m going to need some things. Do you have any sort of adhesive?”

  “Adhesive? Do you mean like glue or tape?”

  Again the laugh. It came high and fast, like the chattering of a squirrel. Jillybean couldn’t seem to control it, and neither could she stop her heart was from racing a mile a minute or her hands from shaking. She hid them deep in her pockets.

  “That’s exactly what I meant. Oh, I’m going to need a soldering gun…you don’t know what that is I see. If Stu stops by, ask him. And I’ll need tools, just the usual, nothing fancy.”

  Jenn had tools in a neat little box and handed them over, no questions asked. In fact, she was purposefully not asking questions about any of it, and she had an excuse ready just in case Jillybean asked for her help. Secretly, Jenn didn’t want to go anywhere near the electricity maker.

  Ever since she had met Jillybean, Jenn had been seeing fewer and fewer signs. It was almost as if Jillybean’s constant references to technical and scientific things had put a damper on Jenn’s ability to see the signs that had once flourished all around her. Besides, when Jillybean got too deep into her science blather, Jenn didn’t really understand much of what she was saying and it made her feel stupid.

  “Have fun,” Jenn said as Jillybean was walking out the door.

  “Fun? You think building a scale-model wind-powered generator with a banishment hanging over my head if said generator doesn’t work, is fun?”

  Jenn mumbled, “Maybe. I guess. And I would help, but…”

  “That’s okay,” Jillybean said before Jenn could start in on a lie. Jillybean found her naive innocence too precious to waste on a useless lie. “I think I got this.” She really wasn’t worried one way or the other. A generator was child’s play and the idea of banishment didn’t scare her in the least since she had never planned on staying in the bay area for very long to begin with.

  She left a relieved looking Jenn and tromped to the clubhouse where Colleen was still at One Shot’s bedside. Colleen’s homecoming queen looks had faded considerably. Her hair had lost its bounce, her dress had an ugly stain on it and her face was lined and haggard.

  Conversely, One Shot looked far more alive, almost like his old self. “Hey, it’s the bitch that shot me,” One Shot said, his familiar sneer back in place.

  “It’s who. As in, look, it’s the bitch who shot me.” She paused to allow him some sort of comeback, but she had ruined the greeting he had been planning for the last hour. “From your unpleasant demeanor, which I believe passes as normal for you, I’m happy to see that you are healing properly.”

  He took a deep breath, clearly to go on some sort of curse-laden rant, but the very act caused his wound to sear. He was only able to grunt, “I’m not unpleasant except for when I been shot, right Colleen?”

  “Oh, right. He’s never unpleasant. Can I go? I got all the stuff you asked for.” She pointed at an old and terribly rusted Schwinn. Next to it was a small box with some wires poking out. Jillybean went to it and saw a few magnets, none bigger than a quarter, and a roll of copper wire that was far too small for her needs.

  “Thank you and thanks for watching him. Let me show you how to keep him quiet for next time. Ten milligrams of this,” she held up a clear bottle of fluid, “in his IV and he will be nighty-night for hours. Thirty milligrams and it will be nighty-night forever.”

  Colleen had been about to tell Jillybean that there would be no “next time,” but what she had just suggested—murder, Colleen was sure—had suddenly put her at a loss for words. One Shot wore the same staggered expression and what color had been in his cheeks had quite gone out of it.

  This pleased Jillybean immensely. Although she hated a bully, she felt that it was okay to use their tactics to undo them from time to time. “I guess you can go. Go eat your dinner. Enjoy your night, but I will need you in the morning. Remember the normal saline I asked for? I have enough to get him through tonight but if something happens, he’ll be out of luck.”

  Looking dejected, Colleen left.

  Jillybean began checking One Shot’s vitals, and as she did he sneered at her, wishing he was strong enough to bash her a good one. “You should be thanking me,” he said. “If it wasn’t for me they woulda sent out a posse to get you and string you up by the neck.”

  “My hero. Open your mouth. Say ah. Oh, my. You really have to start flossing. I’m not trying to be mean, it’s just a fact. You probably have a few cavities. Real doozies judging by the smell and the plaque build-up.”

  This only made him want to punch her even more.

  She knew this and was only afraid because if he tried, he would tear the stitches holding his intestines together, and that would mean a ton more work. “I’m just trying to help. Okay, your stitches look good. No sign of infection. No drainage.” She listened to his belly with her stethoscope and heard nothing, which was normal. His bowel was currently paralyzed and would be for another day or two.

  “You’ll live,” she stated.

  Her prognosis did nothing to change his mind about her. He would hate her until she was dead and buried. �
��Then you’ll live too. Your life depends on mine, so let’s not pretend you’re doing me any favors. And don’t think I’m afraid of you. Even when you’re crazy you gotta have the sense to know I’m untouchable.”

  “I wouldn’t bet my life on that if I were you.” She immediately turned away, ignoring him completely. She knew what was going on in the ruffian’s head and did not fear it in the least since she had gone against men so much more capable than this half-beast.

  With disappointment in her yellow eyes, she gazed at the magnets and the wire. They really wouldn’t do, not even for a demonstration. The bike would, barely.

  Wheeling it out into the lobby, she lit another candle, went to the nearest receptacle and plopped down in front of it. There was wire in the walls and for the next hour she pulled and dug out all she needed. Then she went to work on the speakers in the conference room, popping them open and prying out their magnets. Next, she found a vacuum and after ripping out its guts she stole the magnets from it as well.

  Electricity was simple to make: revolving magnets within a copper wire coil generated a flow of electrons. Done. The real trick was to produce a constant flow. The generator she had built in Bainbridge was a coal-fired steam generator and compared to the plants built before the apocalypse it was a crude, childish attempt.

  She had drawn up plans for something far more grand, but lacked the resources to build it. There on the hilltop she was hamstrung to an even greater extent. Chief of these was a complete lack of coal. As an energy source it had been practically outlawed in California before the apocalypse. Washington had not been much better and yet there were still train cars filled with the stuff, more than Bainbridge could use in a hundred years.

  Jillybean would have to settle for another source, the most obvious being wind power, not that she would waste a second constructing an actual life-sized functioning wind generator. The hilltop was a comically bad place to build a society, though it was an apparently lucky one. Luck could be the only reason it had survived as long as it had.

  Now, that the Corsairs knew exactly where they were, luck was not going to save them. They needed to move and they needed to move quickly. But they would not. She knew that just as she knew the poison burning in One Shot’s heart.

  They had been lulled by years of ease and relative sloth. Everything they needed was close at hand: fish by the dozen, easily pulled from the bay, clothing lying about everywhere, wood for fires just outside the gates and fresh water within them. Even their little farms displayed their languorous nature. Each plot was just large enough to require a few hours’ worth of work a week and of course they produced just enough. That was how they lived their life, doing just enough and always having just enough.

  “But they want electricity, so they’re going to get electricity.”

  Although she had joked about the idea that making a wind-powered generator could be fun, she actually enjoyed tinkering. Using wire coat-hangers and a sheet that had once hung across one of the windows, she made neat little fans that spun on a greased bike wheel, this turned a rod connected to the magnets she had glued into a clump. Around the clump was a pinky-thick band of gleaming copper wire that she had braided from the odds and ends. Attached to this was a rubber coated cord that snaked to a lamp in which she had found a proper little LED 8-watt bulb.

  She had put the contraption together squarely in the middle of the conference room and now it was surrounded by a mishmash of junk and trash: the dead bicycle, the dissected vacuum, a dozen hangers, the remains of the sheet, a fan whose blades she had found both too small and heavy for her needs, nuts, bolts and a lawn mower that she had flipped over and was dripping oil slowly into a pan.

  “Does it work?” Stu Currans asked from the door. He had a plate in one hand and a candle in the other. It was only then that she realized that hers had burned down to a little puddle and that the wick was just about to be drowned.

  She jumped a little, having been so absorbed in the process that she hadn’t heard him come in. “It just needs wind,” she answered and gave the fan blade a quick whirl. At the other end of the machine, the LED light glowed briefly and then faded.

  Stu stared at the little light in wonder and when it went out he asked for more, feeling like a child seeing a magic trick. Jillybean gave it one more whirl and then, suddenly famished, asked, “What do you have there?”

  “Catfish. There were four monster catfish living in the hold of the Saber. Jenn told me you hadn’t cared for her preserves.”

  Stu had made more than just broiled catfish, he also had glazed yam on the plate. She tore into the meal, groaning lustily. “I had no notion I was this hungry.”

  “You should be more than a bit hungry. You’ve been at this for hours.”

  “Hours? What time is it?” In answer, he opened the door. From the lobby window she had de-sheeted came a pale yellow light as the first rays of the sun streamed over the tip of Mount Diablo twenty miles due east. Just like that Jillybean was exhausted. The uppers and downers were out of her system, leaving her in a natural state of fatigue.

  “Weren’t you supposed to bring me a soldering gun at some point?”

  He held out a hand, which she took without question and he helped her up, asking, “And how were you gonna use it? Which one of these wall sockets would we have plugged it into?”

  She summoned enough energy to laugh at herself. “What a goose I am. You’re perfectly right. Here, hold on. If it’s been so long I should check on the thug…I mean my patient.”

  “It’s about time,” One Shot growled. “I’ve been in pain for hours and where the hell have you been? Shacking up with Stu by the looks of it.”

  Jillybean felt the first stirrings of a shadow within her. She ignored both the shadow and One Shot even as she gave him a quick once over, hearing the first gurgle of bowel sounds, which was something of a relief. “BP, pulse, respirations and temp, are all normal. Looks like you’re on the mend. Oh no, don’t thank me,” she added when he only sneered harder.

  She trimmed back his pain meds slightly. Then she was done. Barely able to keep her eyes open, she yawned in imitation of a hippo, showing off her back molars and not caring in the least.

  Stu led her to Jenn’s apartment, though carried was closer to the mark. Her exhaustion hit a low point and she began reeling like a drunk. Now that her attention was no longer so focused, she felt the first cravings: one part of her wanted her bed and the other her pills—not the accursed downers, but the amphetamines.

  With buckets in hand, Jenn answered her door on the first knock. After a good night’s sleep, she’d been preparing a bath for herself. She was well past tired of appearing before Mike looking little better than a used dishrag.

  “Can you watch over her today?” Stu asked. “You know, keep people away while she sleeps?”

  “Me?” Jenn leaned in close. “I thought you were going to help me today. You said you would, you know, make me kinda like how Colleen is.”

  He had completely forgot his promise. “I’ll ask Mike to watch her.” Jenn’s face took on a stricken look but he took no notice as he angled Jillybean toward the back bedroom. “Though chances are he’s already asleep,” he said, to her great relief. “He was at the boat all night trying to repair the hole in her. It’s the Coven I’m most worry about. Jillybean left a mess in their little room while making her generator thing. I’d better talk to them before we leave.”

  “I’ll just take a bath…” Jenn began.

  “No, do it when we get back. You always come back filthy. Every single time. I’ll be back in an hour, so be ready.” Just before leaving, he went back into Jillybean’s room and kissed her forehead, thinking that she was asleep, which she wasn’t.

  Although she had been slipping in and out of a walking coma on the way back, the second her head hit the pillow her mind had begun racing along, hunting down ghosts of ideas and turning them over and over. Finally, in desperation she snuck out to the living room and hunted around in
her pack until she found the bottle of barbiturates. Two went down her gullet and in no time she was out and stayed that way until late in the afternoon. She even slept through Jenn’s triumphant return. The girl came back very dirty, just as Stu had foreseen. Dirty but happy because she came back laden down with dresses and shirts and shoes and jewelry, all of which were splendid and lady-like, a quality she hadn’t ever hoped of attaining.

  And it was an altogether strange thing to her that the shoes she brought home delighted her beyond reason.

  Still Jillybean slept on as Jenn mixed and matched.

  Jenn was not the only one in high spirits. Mike had worked straight through the night, repairing not just the hole, but also the sadly wrecked floors in the cabin. Without them it was just a sloping dark room that really wasn’t useful in any way.

  Now, the floors he installed were not what they had been: specially treated teak and holly that gave the interior of the Saber a fancy air. The flooring he put in consisted of uneven and splintery two-by-fours that he cut himself, blistering his hands in the process. He covered the boards in a carpet that he had stripped from the nearest house and, with only the light of the moon to see by, he furnished the boat with borrowed chairs, mattresses, folding tables, coolers and fishing gear.

  Then, exhausted, he too slept the day away. It was late afternoon when he woke in an almost euphoric state, wishing he could get the Saber back on the water right then. “Two more days,” he told himself. The resin would take that long to dry.

  He washed up quickly, eager to tell Jenn about the boat.

  Across the complex, she couldn’t wait to show off her new look.

  She had chosen a deep green dress that hung just below her knee, silver shoes with a two-inch heel—the highest her unpracticed feet could handle—and a diamond necklace. Had it not been for the shoes and the diamonds, the dress would have been appropriate in a business setting, but with them it became something more.