The Queen of the Dead Read online

  Donna understood this better than anyone and it was through this understanding that she had kept her high perch for so long. She had been the chief assigner of blames for the last nine years and by any measure, it had not been a very good or productive nine years.

  The Hill People, far from flourishing, had grown steadily weaker. There was plenty of blame for this to go around, though a good deal had managed to fall on Jenn Lockhart’s shoulders. But if the Coven allowed Jillybean to stay and she killed someone, there would be a great deal of fallout and the Coven would get their share.

  Oh, but how she missed electricity and hot water and all the rest. And there was no denying Jillybean’s genius as a surgeon. The entire Coven had given up on One Shot when he had slipped into what appeared to be a coma. They had lit a candle and left him to “die with dignity,” as Miss Shay put it, which had been gross cowardice on their part.

  She had also fixed up both Aaron and William as if it were nothing. Donna had brought up her dinner, puking right into the bushes at the sight, but Jillybean had taken the saw to Aaron without blinking and had stitched William up as if she were knitting a blanket.

  If Jillybean had been with them from the start she could have saved another fifty souls and that was on the Hilltop alone. Alcatraz had many similar traumas and accidents that turned fatal.

  “We might keep her,” Donna finally decided. “If One Shot lives and if she can build a machine to make electricity. I want your promise to be honest about this Jenn. If you lie to me, I will expel both of you empty-handed. You’ll walk out the gate with nothing but the clothes on your back.”

  It would be a death sentence, an especially cruel one, and everyone knew it. “I won’t lie,” Jenn promised, not knowing if she could keep her word.

  Chapter 9

  Mike and Stu were discussing how to raise the Saber when Jenn came back to the clinic. The discussion was a quiet one as they both spent long stretches in silence, picturing the boat, its great bulk resting on the rocky bottom of the harbor, its mast stabbing up out of the water.

  Stu threw out, “Couldn’t we just get a chain and pull it out?”

  This was followed by a long pause in which they both bit their lips. Mike eventually answered, “No. It’ll tear up the keel even worse.” This was his worst nightmare. A small hole or crack could be fixed in a few days, but once a hole reached a certain size, the entire integrity of the hull would become questionable.

  “What about lifting it straight up? It can’t be that heavy, right? I used to pull the Puffer around one-handed. If we get enough people…”

  Jenn entered, ending the conversation. She had left afraid and dejected, and returned feeling as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The weight returned as she saw Colleen standing at Mike’s elbow, gazing up at him—and did she just bat her eyes?

  “What happened?” Stu demanded. “What did they say?” They looked at her expectantly as she explained what was being asked of Jillybean.

  Colleen’s red lips drew down. “Electricity? You can’t just make electricity. It comes from somewhere. It comes from batteries and lightning. Maybe it can be collected in some way, but no one knows how.”

  Jenn felt a moment of disquiet at this and Mike was suddenly uncertain about the entire concept. Stu shook his head. “Sorry, but you’re wrong. You can make electricity just like you can make light and sound.”

  “That’s right,” Mike said. “That Neil guy back at Bainbridge said they could make electricity out of coal.”

  “Coal?” Colleen replied with a laugh. “Have you ever seen electricity come out of coal? We used to burn it all the time in the old days and I never saw electricity come from it.” The term “the old days” sounded strange coming from a girl who was only a year older than Jenn, still they all knew what she meant.

  A trader had come through many years before and had more coal than he knew what to do with. The people of the hilltop were kept very warm that year on account of it. Since then, traders with coal were a rare thing, though they always talked like coal was found everywhere east of the Sierras.

  “And if the electricity doesn’t come by burning it, how does it come?” Colleen went on. “Do you rub it together?” She smiled at her joke; everyone else looked uneasy, not having any idea.

  “I’ll just ask Jillybean,” Jenn announced. She took a step towards the door and hesitated. “Mike should come with me, just in case she’s, you know, a little upset.”

  Mike really was the last person to be around Jillybean when she was “upset.” Stu gently pushed him back. “I’ll go. I think I have a better relationship with her than he does, Jenn. You know that as well as…oh.” She was glaring daggers at him. “Uh, so, while I’m taking care of this, Mike why don’t you go take a look at the boat? Colleen, you don’t mind watching over One Shot, do you?”

  She looked down at her fancy dress, but before she could make an excuse, Stu said, “Good. We probably won’t be that long.” The three left and on the way to the maintenance shed where Jillybean was being jailed, Stu said, “See? I got your back.”

  Jenn was still red with embarrassment at how obvious the entire thing had been. Still, she appreciated that he was on her side.

  They came to the garage-sized shed which had acted as a sort of a drunk tank/time out facility for years. There was a lock in the hasp; the key to it hung on an old rusty nail four feet away. It was hardly maximum security.

  “Who do you think is going to be in there?” Stu asked in a whisper. “Jillybean?”

  “I don’t think Jillybean went in.” The girl who left Jenn’s apartment wasn’t Jillybean. Whoever it was, had been trying their best to pretend otherwise. “It won’t be hard to find out.” She unlocked the door and opened it only wide enough to peer in, afraid that Eve or some other dark entity would come bursting out. When this failed to happen, she opened the door further, letting the dull grey light push back the shadows until she saw Jillybean chained to the single support post in the center of the shed.

  The girl, blinking against the light, eyed Jenn for a moment before she shrugged and asked, “What’s the verdict?”

  “The verdict is that you will only live if Jillybean can save the both of you.”

  Because of her towering intellect and force of spirit, Jillybean always made Jenn feel small and terribly young. Eve, on the other hand, because of the malignancy of her very nature, made Jenn fear for her everlasting soul, and perhaps it was this that also allowed Jenn to feel greatly superior to the creature.

  Still eyeing Jenn, Eve spat at her. She did not spit as a woman might, all saliva and frothy anger. No, she spat as though she had tobacco stuck in her lip and a brown swirl filling her mouth. They were too far apart for Eve to hit Jenn and so the former merely spat insultingly at Jenn’s feet.

  “Let’s hear it. Let’s hear how only the great and powerful Jillybean can save me. Then maybe I’ll tell you how many times I saved her. And how she didn’t just want me to, she needed me to save her, because she’s never been able to do what I can do.”

  Pointedly, Jenn looked around at the shadows in the shed as they attempted to hide from the light. “This is what you’ve managed to do for Jillybean. I can’t say as I’m all that impressed. I would be more impressed if you could have saved One Shot.”

  Eve’s eyes, her yellow eyes, went to slits. The unnatural color seemed so much better suited to her than to Jillybean. “You’re not fooling anyone. He’s alive, otherwise it wouldn’t have been you showing up. Also, it was a simple enough surgery. A belly wound, bah. Remember that ugly whore she fixed up on the ship. Now that was a tough one. The boat pitching back and forth, no light at all and the girl had mostly given up.”

  Jenn remembered it quite well and was surprised that Eve knew it at all. “Oh, I see things,” Eve explained. “I get glimpses when Jillybean is at her lowest, like when she sent you out against the Corsairs all alone. When she sent you to die. That was her idea, at least. She was quite wi
lling to sacrifice you for the sake of her li…”

  “Enough,” Stu said, speaking in a low rumble. “We need to know how to make electricity. Do you know how to do that?”

  The yellow cat’s eyes took on a look of poorly hidden cunning. “I could with the right materials. There were items in Oakland that I would need. I saw them yesterday, but since I didn’t know I was going to be…”

  “What exactly?” Stu demanded. “What’s in Oakland that can’t be found closer?” The yellow eyes shifted away and Stu sighed. “I thought so. How about this: we need to raise the Saber. It’s drowned in about fifteen feet of water, right up against the dock. How do we get her out?”

  “I’ll need to see how she lays.”

  Stu laughed easily. He was relaxed and his smile was the same one he would use on a wayward four-year-old. “I’ll draw you a sketch if you need it, though I doubt Jillybean would need one.” She glared and he laughed again, but said nothing else. The two sat there staring fixedly into each other’s eyes, each waiting for the other to speak.

  In this Stu had a great advantage. He was naturally so taciturn he could go an hour in the company of another without saying a word.

  This silent contest had Jenn bored in minutes and it was a relief when Eve caved, saying, “I don’t know. I’d pump out the water or something.”

  “There’s a hole in the hull and the water would just flow back in.”

  “Then I’d steal a new boat.”

  “There aren’t any to steal. Look Eve, I’m trying to give you a chance. Think. How would Jillybean do it?”

  Eve actually tried to figure out the little puzzle, even going so far as to try to think like Jillybean, which was her undoing. As she was defined solely by her thoughts and memories, Eve couldn’t “think” like Jillybean without becoming her. Slowly the hate in her eyes turned to confusion and then to sadness.

  “Hello Stu. What’s this about the Saber? She hasn’t been raised yet? What’s everyone been doing?”

  As always, Stu was slow to answer. For a minute, he stared at her, enjoying the simple pleasure of her smile when she asked, “What?”

  “Nothing I just…never mind. People are doing what they always do. They’re waiting for someone to tell them what to do, though in this case, I think it might be warranted. No one here has ever tried to raise a sunken boat before. Mike’s worried that we’ll hurt it worse no matter what we do.”

  Jillybean tried to stretch, but was brought up short by the chains. She took a second to study them, then she gazed at her hands and clothes, then Stu’s smiling face, pausing to admire his straight white teeth, and finally the confusion found in Jenn’s eyes.

  She ticked off what she knew of the situation based on the facts gathered in her observations: “Eve has not killed anyone. That’s good. One Shot is still alive, obviously. The Coven has arrested me and placed me in this pitiful excuse for a jail, and they are looking for me to perform a few minor feats of quasi-genius for them.”

  “Quasi?” Jenn asked.

  “It doesn’t take genius level intelligence to raise a boat,” Jillybean explained. “And what else? Stu, I can read you like a book.” When Jenn explained it was concerning electricity and that Jillybean was not to lie about whether she could make it or not, Jillybean couldn’t help the rush of gay laughter. “Next you’ll be wanting the recipe for ice.”

  She laughed at this until she was pink and there were tears in her eyes. “This is not funny,” Jenn said, crossly. “They could keep you locked up forever if they wanted.”

  This brought on another fit and it was sometime before Jillybean could breathe. “Locked up forever in a shed? Eve could have gotten out of here and she would have if we hadn’t been so tired.” She smirked and held up a chained wrist. “And look at these. Standard issue police cuffs, they’re too easy.”

  Jenn looked doubtful. “I don’t care how smart you are, Jillybean, you can’t smart your way through iron.” Just as she said this she remembered what Neil Martin had said about trying to lock her away: The last thing anyone would want to do is try to put her behind bars. Now Jenn wished she had asked why?

  “First, these aren’t made of iron and second, you’d be surprised what a person can ‘smart’ their way out of. Now, since I won’t be offering free demonstrations let’s get these off me. I really should check on my patient.” She presented the cuffs and Stu took them off without hesitation.

  Jillybean marched out of the shed as if the concept of arrest or imprisonment was foreign to her. She even nodded pleasantly to Miss Shay as she entered the clubhouse.

  Miss Shay looked down her nose at her. “I was just about to fetch you. There’s a problem.” She followed them into the clinic where One Shot was moaning in fantastic misery. Colleen stood near him, completely lost and ghastly pale. “It seems he’s dying.” Miss Shay’s announcement was devoid of emotion and filled with accusation.

  “Hardly,” Jillybean replied. She gave One Shot a quick review, changed out the IV bag hooked to his arm, and gave him a painkiller. They all watched in amazement as the single syringe of what looked like clear liquid calmed him considerably. “I’m going to need more normal saline, the heaviest copper wiring you can find and magnets, the bigger the better. Oh and a ten-speed bike.”

  She strode out after saying this, leaving the four of them looking back and forth at each other. “She wasn’t talking to me, was she?” Miss Shay asked, her indignation meter red-lining at the idea.

  “I can’t do it, I have to keep an eye on her,” Jenn said, meaning Jillybean.

  Stu shrugged as if he wished he could help. “And I have to do something about the Saber.”

  Colleen’s mouth fell open as she strained to come up with an excuse. She wanted to get out of that room and away from One Shot, who was disgusting even when he slept, but that didn’t mean she wanted to go out in the world and scrounge around after odds and ends on what she considered a whim.

  She hesitated so long that Miss Shay said, “Don’t worry, dear, I’ll find someone to watch him.” She meant One Shot and now Colleen was stuck.

  “Good luck,” Jenn said and hurried out of the room, followed by a limping Stu Currans. They caught up with Jillybean who immediately began rattling off more items she would need, her mouth going so quickly it was hard to follow it all.

  “And your meds,” Stu added to the list when she paused to take a breath. “I take it you’ve forgotten your pills today?”

  This brought her up short and for just a flash, a childish “I don’t want to,” look crossed her face. With a sigh, she admitted, “No, I haven’t.”

  Because of her failing liver, she started with two pills, added two more an hour later, then, because her heart started beating erratically she took two “downers” as she called them. Of course, these made her head feel leaden so she counteracted the effects by swallowing two “uppers.”

  For the next two hours she was a whirlwind of activity. With Stu and Jenn struggling to catch up, she went down to the harbor and found Mike in his ghillie suit, on the dock staring down at the boat beneath the water. In the fading light it looked like a ghost ship that might suddenly slip away on its own.

  “Aren’t you the saddest bit of shrubbery ever?” Jillybean joked. “Don’t worry your little leaves over this, we’ll get her out of there in a jiffy. First things first, we’re going to need a fire or two. Jenn can you get rid of the dead for us?”

  Jenn wanted to ask: By myself? but said nothing. She knew that Jillybean wouldn’t ask her to do something she couldn’t handle. They had dodged six zombies coming down to the harbor, which had seemed like a lot, but when she lit her first fire a few hundred yards from the docks, she was shocked at how many came swarming up. She lost count after thirty.

  Feeling jittery, she went further out and scraped together a pile of leaves and downed tree branches and lit another, even larger fire that belched dark smoke into the sky—the dead came at a run. Now there were close to a hundred. She sat in
the shadow of a low-limbed pine and watched them for a few minutes feeling small and wondering if this was how people felt back in the time of dinosaurs.

  “How did they live through that at all?” It was a concept she couldn’t wrap her mind around.

  Once the zombies had been drawn away, raising the Saber turned out easier than any of them, Jillybean excluded, could have guessed. To her it was barely a challenge especially since there were dozens of boat trailers, plenty of wet suits and enough hydraulic jacks to lift an aircraft carrier; all within a hundred yards.

  Jillybean began by having them sink one of the smaller docks to use as a boat ramp. Next, they wheeled the trailer into position, submerging it right in front of the Saber. Then came the part Jenn dreaded: actually getting in the frigid water.

  Thirty seconds at a time, they dove down to work the jacks into position and gradually got the boat up onto the trailer.

  Using the same jacks, horizontally this time, they slowly propelled the boat, foot by foot, onto dry land.

  As water streamed out of it, Mike went to the fourteen-inch long hole and began tapping around it. “Okay, okay,” he said in a loving whisper. “This isn’t so bad. It’s just a little hole. It’s definitely fixable. Jillybean, I could kiss you.”

  Jillybean didn’t hear this. The uppers she had taken were out of her system and she had gone from full power to a dead stop the moment the Saber’s rudder had cleared the water. She was lying in a near stupor on the dock with Jenn kneeling over her.

  Jenn had heard Mike very clearly.

  Chapter 10

  Mike and Stu stayed to hide the boat, while Jenn helped Jillybean up the hill. She was fagged to the point of apathy and would have blundered into one of the dead if Jenn hadn’t been there for her—it wasn’t her fault that Mike wanted to kiss her, Jenn kept telling herself.