The Queen of the Dead Page 5

  She stared off for a minute, lost in her memories. When Jenn coughed lightly to bring her back, Jillybean turned sad eyes on her and asked, “What were we talking about? Oh yes, getting across the bay. Do you have any ideas?”

  Jenn’s flimsy grasp of logic failed her, and she shook her head. Jillybean lifted a single shoulder in a half-shrug. “It can’t be that hard. I’ll think of something on the way.”

  “On the way where?” Jenn asked.

  “North. This is Highland Hospital and, if my memory serves, that puts us three miles from where the Bay Bridge used to be. That’s the shortest crossing point to San Francisco. It’s barely a mile. We’ll cross there.”

  Jillybean threw the shreds of the blue blanket over her head and marched away. Jenn hurried to catch up, whispering, “I can’t swim that far. Not when it’s this cold and not with the bay as choppy as it is.”

  “You could if you had to, but don’t worry, something will come to me. It always does.” That something, much to Jenn’s dismay turned out to be a child’s pool, a round piece of formed, brittle, plastic, eight feet in diameter and fourteen inches in height.

  “You have got to be kidding,” Jenn said, staring at it in shock. She then looked out at the bay where the approaching storm was already kicking up white-capped waves. “You want to cross the bay in a kiddie pool? Really? It doesn’t have a sail and there’s no way to steer it.”

  Jillybean gazed at her fondly. She had the incredible urge to kiss Jenn on the cheek and did so, leaving Jenn even more shocked than before. It made Jillybean laugh. “You really are kinda very courageous, you know that? I wish I was that brave. You know why? Because I was scared that the wind would flip us, or that we’d take on so much water that we would flounder and sink and drown to death and the crabs would eat our rotting bodies.”

  “And I’m worried about that, too,” Jenn replied in a small voice.

  “Oh, you’re just saying that to make me feel good. That’s so nice. Let me put your mind at rest. There is so much wind that we don’t need a sail and as for steering, we can remedy that with a few oars of proper size. Didn’t we pass like a thousand different piers? I think we did. Wait here.”

  She left Jenn standing there as she dragged the pool straight down the hill to the bay. After a second, Jenn caught up and took hold of one side of the pool and only just in time as the freezing wind began to pick up.

  The wind stung any exposed body part and the ghillie suits, with their many holes, offered little protection.

  When they got to the water’s edge and Jillybean saw Jenn begin to shiver, she snapped her fingers with sudden, brilliant insight. “Hey, you’re cold! Okay, I can fix that. Plant yourself right here.” She set Jenn in the pool like a human paperweight to keep it from blowing away, and left to outfit them properly. Ten minutes later, she came back with a garbage bag bulging with hats, gloves, coats, rubber boots, yellow slickers and extra clothes. “Put these on. I’ll be right back.”

  She was back in five minutes, wearing a triumphant smile and proclaimed, “I found a rowing club!”

  Jenn jumped up in excitement. “Rowing? Do you mean a place with boats?”

  “Of course! They have a bunch and they have oars. Come look.”

  “Oars?” The excitement on Jenn’s face dimmed and when they walked into the dim interior of the rowing club it faded altogether. There were eighteen boats in the establishment and not one would be of any use to them. They were long and so narrow that even the girls, with their skinny hips, could barely fit into them and worse, they had less than a foot of draft, meaning that they couldn’t sit in the boat, they’d basically have to sit on the boat with only a few inches of wood between them and the water. Every wave on the bay would come right over the top of them.

  “Why did you show this to me?” Jenn groused, pulling off her ghillie suit.

  “Because, look at these oars.” Jillybean marveled over them. “I know what you’re thinking, they aren’t for rowing, they’re for steering.”

  “I don’t think I was thinking that. I was thinking we’re going to die.”

  Jillybean laughed as she leaned the oar against a wall and formed her hands into a circle saying, “Imagine this is the pool. The wind is out of the northwest, if we use a single oar as a rudder, we’ll only spin.” As if Jenn didn’t know what spin was, Jillybean rotated her hands. “The second oar will be to counter that spin. It will add to the drag, but we only have a mile to cover. It should be all good.”

  It was not.

  Chapter 5

  The wind had picked up even more and twice snatched the plastic pool from their hands, sending it rolling like a dropped quarter down the street. Jillybean chased after it, the shredded blue blanket tied at her neck flapping behind her. In the fading light she looked like a spirit, but as she giggled as she ran, Jenn was not undone by the view as she might normally have been.

  The wind now brought with it a stinging rain that was mostly ice crystals. They came zipping in at a slant, forcing the two girls to walk behind the blue pool. The weather was a hardship that was also a blessing: the dead had scattered to hide indoors, allowing the two of them to make it down to the jutting finger of land that poked out into the bay from West Oakland.

  A mile and a half away was the financial district of San Francisco, the closest point. A mile or so to the northwest of them was Alcatraz and beyond that was The Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands and then home. Jenn stared longingly in that direction as Jillybean worked out the forces at play that would push the little pool south.

  “It’s forty miles to the end of the bay,” Jenn told her, afraid that if Jillybean messed things up they would be on the bay for hours before fetching up just north of Santa Clara. It wouldn’t be only One Shot who would die if the wind took them that far.

  “I’m aware,” Jillybean said. “Get in, I’ll hold it for you.” Jenn eyed the pool with perfectly reasonable apprehension. “Go on. It won’t bite.”

  Jenn approached the pool in an altogether skittish manner, fearing she would go plunging through the plastic if she put too much weight at any one point. After testing the floor of the pool with one foot and not liking the way in which it sagged, she thought she’d try going in butt first. A more clumsy and ungainly manner couldn’t have been contrived and she slipped and slithered on the wet plastic. Above her, Jillybean struggled to contain her laughter which in the end came peeling out high and loud.

  This earned her a glare from Jenn. “Let’s see you do it.” With no one holding the heaving boat next to the dock she figured Jillybean would fall overboard and, cross as she was, she was prepared to laugh even louder than Jillybean had.

  “Hold the end of these,” Jillybean said, giving Jenn the working ends of the oars. When she had them resting on her thighs, Jillybean laid the other ends on the dock about a shoulder width apart. Putting herself between them, her weight distributed evenly, she easily slipped into the pool, settling in on her knees.

  Jenn couldn’t hide her disappointment or her anger. “You could have shown me that before I…” Her perfectly righteous indignation suddenly withered to nothing, replaced by concern. “Hey, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “My eyes? Oh right.” Jillybean sighed, looking abruptly tired. “Are the sclera slightly yellow in color?”

  “Sclera? Do you mean the white part? Yeah. I didn’t notice it before but with the snow it’s kinda obvious. What’s it mean? Are you sick?”

  “In a way, I am. It’s called jaundice and is a symptom of liver disease. It’s the meds I take. Although they have lost their potency they are still a toxin, meaning they are a strain on the body. Really, it’s nothing for you to worry about, especially here and now. We have enough on our plate.”

  She wasn’t lying about that. Jillybean used one of the oars to shove them away from the dock, and now the wind was driving them straight south and waves were bouncing them up and down. “Slide over and put your oar in the water, just so,” Jillybean sa
id, indicating what she wanted by using her own oar. They spun slowly as Jillybean tried to work out angles that would satisfy.

  Finally, she had the two of them set properly and if seen from above with their oars held stiffly in the water, they resembled the face of a watch at half past three, while their direction of travel was generally towards the seven o’clock position.

  The winds blew stronger and stronger, and the waves began to build from little swells to sharp-faced hills. Many of the waves crested over the lip of the pool and every few minutes they would bail frantically with the big plastic buckets Jillybean had the foresight to bring with them. Then they would get back to the business of straining at their oars to keep them on course.

  It was a terrible ordeal as the two of them were soaked and freezing, their hands simultaneously numb and screaming in pain. But there was nothing they could do except hold on and persevere.

  Jenn grew so cold that for a while she believed she lost consciousness with her eyes open. She held onto her oar and stared blankly until Jillybean yelled at her to bail then she would take up her bucket and bail all the while maintaining that frozen stare.

  This went on for two hours and if it hadn’t been for Jillybean’s constant cajoling, encouragement and yelling for Jenn to stay with her, they would have been lost to the wind or the waves. Just as Jenn thought she could feel her blood as it flowed like a slurry through her veins, Jillybean said, “We’re close now, Jenn. Stay with me.” Jenn turned her head up and saw a looming two-hundred foot high port crane. In the dark and the whipping snow, it looked a bit like a giant insect and had Jenn been able to muster the strength for an emotion she might have been frightened.

  “Maybe we should paddle,” Jillybean suggested; she sounded drunk and when Jenn turned her torpid gaze from the insect-like crane she saw the yellow had advanced in Jillybean’s eyes.

  She looked terrible, but just then Jenn couldn’t find the energy to care. “Paddle?” The oars were too big for normal paddling and so Jenn did her best to push them back and forth on a short arc somewhat like a Venetian gondolier. Jillybean tried to help but she had spent the last of her energy getting them across the bay. Her oar slipped out of her hands and floated away.

  She tried to splash them along with her hands and the attempt was so miserably pathetic that Jenn rallied the last of her strength. “Don’t,” Jenn said. “I’ll get us there.” She knew approximately where they were: along the southeastern edge of San Francisco where the warehouses, those that were still standing, were ugly with rust and broken windows. Most were missing their roofs and all of them were in a state of near collapse and were exceedingly dangerous. Even as she thought this, the blowing wind took one down with a thundering crash that echoed throughout the city. It was a dark, lonely sound.

  The sun was far away, well beyond the horizon by the time they finally bumped up along a jumbled shore of rotting wood, broken asphalt and green, algae-covered styrofoam. The two girls climbed out of the pool and slogged onto land. Jillybean was stooped over, barely able to stand, and had to be half-carried by Jenn.

  The two stumbled inland, desperately in need of shelter and warmth and were lucky enough to find a small structure whose walls were composed of cinderblock and whose roof was little more than simple corrugated metal held down by a few one-inch nails. The windowless building was about the size of a two-car garage and smelled of old oil.

  Shutting the door cut off the wind and the sound of the storm became muted. Inside, it was amazingly snug, although the extreme darkness was a physical force. It was so thick that it pressed in on Jenn and she found herself struggling slightly to breathe.

  “Do you have your flashlight? Jillybean?” Jillybean didn’t answer. Jenn turned around and, stretching out her arms, felt the darkness, swishing it about and couldn’t find her at first. Then her foot struck the girl, who had folded in on herself and was now an incoherent, shivering little ball.

  Jenn dropped down and rummaged through her pockets until she found the flashlight. In its harsh light Jillybean was ghostly white, all save her blue lips and her strangely yellowed eyes.

  “Hey, Jillybean! Look at me. I’ll get you dry and then we’ll be okay.” Jillybean mumbled something and Jenn asked, “What was that?” but only because she wanted to keep her conscious. Jillybean mumbled again as Jenn stripped away the layers of sodden clothes and then dug through the garbage bag they had dragged from the boat, looking for something dry.

  Jenn was cold as well but touching Jillybean’s skin was frightening. Her flesh seemed hard, as if she was actually freezing. Worse, was her semi-conscious state. Dry clothes helped, but they needed actual warmth. The concrete slab beneath their feet was like a block of ice, stealing the heat from their bodies.

  She shone the light around the building and saw that it was crowded with machinery; mostly generators and various models of forklifts, neither of which would burn. On a shelf above a work station, she found a row of thick books with plastic covers. They were oil stained and it seemed as though there were smudged thumbprints on every page.

  Jenn pulled down an armload and hurried back to Jillybean. “Hold on. I’ll get a fire started in a snap.” Jillybean didn’t even open her eyes.

  Getting a fire going with the paper was easy, sustaining it was the difficult part. She burned one of the books—a tremendously complicated repair manual of some sort—in minutes, and although the air temperature had risen considerably, the floor was still painfully cold.

  Jenn went on another search and found some filthy plastic tarps; she folded and layered them until they formed a six-inch thick mattress. This she set so close to the fire that the edges curled and blackened, giving off a greasy smoke.

  By the time the fire had devoured a third manual Jillybean ceased shivering, she was still lethargic in body, but had no trouble talking. “Do you know what I find interesting? This isn’t even a truly cold fall, though it is unseasonable for San Francisco. Most people don’t know that between littoral topology and wind flows, this area experiences a greater degree of ocean upwelling than many Pacific settings. This brings the colder layers of the already cold sea to the surface…”

  A moan not caused by the wind stopped her before Jenn had a chance to yawn, though not before her eyes had drooped practically closed. She was instantly awake. “It must see the fire,” Jenn said. “It must be able to see the light somehow.”

  Jillybean set her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m not ready to give it up just yet. I’m barely thawed. I believe we should resort to arms.” Jenn glanced down at her own weak arms, causing Jillybean to laugh. “No, the gun. I’m talking about using the Sig Sauer I gave you. Ah, here he comes. Let’s make sure to preserve the integrity of the door. I’ll get behind it and you shoot.”

  All this came at Jenn so quickly that the beast was pounding on the door even before she figured out what Jillybean was on about. Then came the sudden realization of what was expected of her. She was supposed to fight and kill the creature using only what felt suddenly like a very small gun.

  “You ready?” Jillybean asked.

  She wasn’t, but that didn’t stop Jillybean from popping open the door and flooding the room with a sharp blast of cold air. Habit and instinct saved Jenn as the creature, which turned out to be a she rather than a he, charged into the room with a horrid stench and stomach curdling cry. Jenn hid, ducking behind one of the forklifts.

  It was a child’s hiding place and were it not for the fire which became the sole focus of the beast, she would have been found and quickly devoured. The fire lit up the remains of the beast’s mind and everything outside of its glow was black and insubstantial. The zombie was hideous. Half of its scalp had been pulled from its head and hung in a flap like a vile shelf from the back of its head.

  Jenn could see its cracked and pitted skull as it stood swaying in front of the fire making a growly noise in its throat that wasn’t all that different from the purr of a cat.

  The sound did nothing to
calm the electric fear running through her as she stepped out from behind the forklift and raised the Sig, which jittered in tune with her fear. Although the zombie was captivated by the fire, it wouldn’t remain so. If Jenn kicked a soda can or knocked a wrench from the end of a table, it would turn on her and…

  She had to stop and take a deep near-silent breath before going on. She hit nothing and kicked nothing as she tiptoed up behind the beast. As it was almost eight feet tall, she had to reach high up just to get the tip of the barrel within eighteen inches—a sure hit if she were aiming at, say a pineapple or a coconut hanging from a low branch.

  Then again, neither a pineapple nor a coconut would eat her face off in a rage if the bullet didn’t hit it just right. And it didn’t. The creature had been swaying to some unheard beat, but just as Jenn was about to pull the trigger, the fire suddenly flared, and the beast jerked back.

  She fired and the bullet went through its lank hair and then into the side of its head. Jenn had heard that a person used only a small part of their actual brain, and figured a zombie used only a nub, a small pea-sized mass hidden somewhere inside their massive heads.

  In any case, the bullet missed everything vital, and just as she feared, the creature turned with savage speed, its long arms reaching for Jenn, who was already ducking away around forklifts, dodging left and right as the beast came after her. There was almost no room to run or hide and when she tried to disappear behind a pallet jack, the creature heaved the five-thousand pound machine onto its side.

  Jenn was already running when an explosion of flame enveloped the zombie. Jillybean had set a bundle of paper alight and had thrown it into the creature’s face. It swung its huge arms around in confusion as Jillybean yelled, “Get it again, Jenn!”

  It was faced away from her and so she leapt up onto the downed forklift and fired again into its head. It turned and fell at the same time, looking as though it were corkscrewing into the cement floor as it died.