Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained Read online

  Generation Z

  Book 6

  The Queen Unchained

  By Peter Meredith

  Copyright 2019

  Peter Meredith

  Blah, blah, blah, lawyer speak, lawyer speak, blah blah, blah.

  Do we really need to go into this? Here’s the deal. Looky-no touchy.

  It’s as simple as that.

  Fictional works by Peter Meredith:

  A Perfect America

  Infinite Reality: Daggerland Online Novel 1

  Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2

  Generation Z

  Generation Z: The Queen of the Dead

  Generation Z: The Queen of War

  Generation Z: The Queen Unthroned

  Generation Z: The Queen Enslaved

  Generation Z: The Queen Unchained

  The Sacrificial Daughter

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day One

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day Two

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Three

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Four

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Five

  The Horror of the Shade: Trilogy of the Void 1

  An Illusion of Hell: Trilogy of the Void 2

  Hell Blade: Trilogy of the Void 3

  The Punished

  Sprite

  The Blood Lure The Hidden Land Novel 1

  The King’s Trap The Hidden Land Novel 2

  To Ensnare a Queen The Hidden Land Novel 3

  The Apocalypse: The Undead World Novel 1

  The Apocalypse Survivors: The Undead World Novel 2

  The Apocalypse Outcasts: The Undead World Novel 3

  The Apocalypse Fugitives: The Undead World Novel 4

  The Apocalypse Renegades: The Undead World Novel 5

  The Apocalypse Exile: The Undead World Novel 6

  The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7

  The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8

  The Apocalypse Revenge: The Undead World Novel 9

  The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undead World 10

  The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead Book One

  The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead Book Two

  The Witch: Jillybean in the Undead World

  Jillybean’s First Adventure: An Undead World Expansion

  Tales from the Butcher’s Block

  Chapter 1

  Puget Sound, Washington

  The water in the long, narrow inlet was rich, black and impenetrable. What meager light trickled down from the sky was not reflected in it, nor did it shimmer across its slick surface. It was sucked down, gone forever. The night was darker than any Emily Grey could ever remember, but that wasn’t going to save her. It didn’t matter that the moon was absent and the stars seemed further away than she had ever seen them. They were oh so tiny, as if they were trying to hide in the infinity of space, as if they were abandoning her as well.

  She was dreadfully, horribly alone, except for the moaning, hungry zombies and the Corsair ship bearing down on her, that is. From its great press of sails to its long smooth hull, the ship was pure black and almost didn’t look real, like it was nothing more than a tremendous shadow. And it made no more noise than one as it slipped silently through the black water.

  The instinct to flee from it was very great, and Emily grabbed her paddle in both hands before common sense took over. Even if she wasn’t already exhausted, she would never be able to outrun the boat. This left fighting, hiding, or simply giving up. Each choice was worse than the next and, in the end, fear ruled. She threw her coat over herself and huddled as low as she could in the aluminum canoe, shivering in fright.

  The canoe’s silvery sides were a beacon, and had been spotted from a quarter of a mile away by the Corsairs on the fifty-foot Dead Fish. Having dropped off most of their crew along with the platoon of bandits, there were only four men on board, two of whom were pointing semiautomatic rifles at the lump in the middle of the canoe.

  “Haul down the main,” the captain ordered, twisting to the side so he could keep the canoe in sight. This close to the cliff, the wind was only an intermittent sigh that came and went, making the jib look as though it was breathing. It would sag and then puff out by turns. With the main down, they drifted at an angle towards the canoe until it was right under the bow.

  “Show yourself, moron,” one of the Corsairs at the front of the boat demanded. “We can see you, plain as day.”

  Slowly, Emily pulled down the coat that hadn’t been doing anything to hide her. “Don’t shoot,” she begged.

  “Ho-lee crap!” the Corsair cried, his bulbous, overly large features, screwing themselves up in excitement. “It’s a woman. Billy, get me one of the lanterns. Hey Cap’n, a little to port.” The sighing wind had edged them away by a few feet. Billy came hurrying up, carrying a lantern with a red lens just as the boat swung toward the canoe again. In the red glare they saw Emily, and there was no mistaking what she was. “Ho-lee crap! It’s not a woman, it’s a girl.” Both Billy and the first Corsair grinned hungrily, taking in her long blonde hair and the pert, elfin features that had been maturing from cute to beautiful over the last year.

  “It’s okay,” Billy told her. “We won’t hurt you. Hold out that there paddle, sweetheart so we can get you to safety. There’s zombies all over the place. You don’t want to get pulled under, do you? Come on, hurry.”

  Now all four of them were gazing at her, each trying and failing to mask their true intent. It didn’t help that the first Corsair nudged Billy and whispered, “I got dibs.” She wasn’t an idiot. They were going to make her into a slave and do things to her. That’s what Corsairs did. She had seen enough slaves in Hoquiam to know the truth. She had seen the whip marks and the empty eyes of the women who had hurried by, trying their best not to be noticed. She had seen the bruises and broken noses. She had seen them tremble in fear at the passing of the smallest man.

  That would be Emily. They would take her and hurt her and break her. She would be like poor Kay Gallagher back on Bainbridge, who had been so badly abused that she had the mind of a toddler and had to be told to tie her shoes and brush her hair. That would be Emily…unless she told them who she was.

  Emily Grey was valuable in a sad way. She was more than just a pawn in the terrible game being played out. In a manner of speaking, she was the cornerstone, the foundation, the one thing keeping Bainbridge out of the hands of the Corsairs. If she was caught, they’d use her to get at her mom, who was more than just the governor of the island. Deanna Grey was the island’s spirit—its fighting spirit. Without her, the defenses would crumble overnight. People would run or hide or simply give up. The walls would be abandoned and everyone Emily knew would be turned into slaves.

  But what could Emily do? She was a kid. Although she used to tell people that she was very nearly twelve, and that her birthday was practically only moments away, she was still a child. She liked playing tag and having sleepovers. She had ridiculous daydreams of finding a stallion and riding over the mountains. When she had nightmares, she still climbed into her mother’s bed, and just then she felt terribly small and afraid.

  Child or not, she knew she was stuck. If she said nothing, the four men would do unspeakable horrors to her, and she’d spend the rest of her life as a slave. But if she mentioned who her mom was…No, I’d never do that, she thought to herself, feeling a tiny spark of anger.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” Billy whispered, reaching out a filthy hand to grab the edge of the boat. “Don’t be stupid. It’s not like you’re gonna get away. And if you could, w
here would you go? Don’t you hear all them zombies?” He was right. She couldn’t run and she couldn’t hide. Then again, she wasn’t going to take being called stupid and sweetheart by these vile creatures, and that meant fighting them.

  The thought made her tremble. There were four of them. They were bigger, stronger, and better armed. Yet, she wasn’t exactly defenseless. Between her feet was an old battered Glock with a full magazine; earlier that night, she had killed at least two men with it. She took a secretive peek at it. It didn’t look like much, especially compared to the big black guns that the Corsairs carried. Nevertheless, it was a lethal weapon and if she had it, she wouldn’t need to be so scared. Jillybean had taught her that. She called guns “a girl’s best friend” and “an equalizer of the sexes.”

  On its own, her right hand stretched out for the gun, but as it did, it ran into an invisible wall. Fear stopped her hand. Deep down, Emily was afraid that one small gun didn’t make her equal to a grown man.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” the captain groused. “Rodrigo, get the boathook. And you can forget about dibs, Gavin. She’s mine and I don’t want to hear any damn whining. You three are lucky I didn’t put you on shore with the rest.”

  The captain was bigger than the others and his smile never really touched his angry black eyes. He snatched the long wooden boathook from Rodrigo and used it to snag the canoe. Frantically, uselessly, Emily dug her paddle backwards. She was no match for the captain’s strength, and the others snickered at her feeble display. In a last act of childish defiance, she swung the paddle and smacked the rail of the Dead Fish, hoping to knock aside the pole. The captain was not just strong, he was fast as well, and he grabbed the end of the paddle.

  “Look what you did to my boat, you stupid bitch!” he thundered. “You just earned your first beating.”

  First?

  How many more would come? An infinite number. They would beat her until the day she died. The realization shook her, and she dropped her head. Once more her eyes fell on the Glock, which was sitting in the water that had collected at the bottom of the boat. Seeing it right at that moment turned the spark of anger into a flame and, as though it was nothing more important than a dropped quarter, she reached down and picked it up.

  The grip of the gun felt perfectly natural in her hand. She was a kid, true enough, but she was also big for her age, stronger than she appeared, and had a natural well of courage that she had only just begun to tap. Emily was also very angry—in the last week, she had been kidnapped and threatened with death, torture and rape. She’d been shot at and chased across half of Washington. Her Uncle Neil had been turned into a zombie, and her Aunt Jillybean was being held captive. And, probably not eighty yards away, the one friend she had in all this mess was more than likely dead, floating face down in the black water.

  She had every right to be pissed off!

  Turning toward the captain, she meant to only threaten him with the Glock. She pointed it at his face—and he started to sneer. This undid her anger somewhat; after all, who sneered when a gun was pointed at them? She decided to up the ante, to show him that she really wasn’t as scared as she was, and she was very, very scared. Her heart was racing, and her breath was going in and out of her, ragged and fast.

  “I-I-I’ll do it,” she whispered and then slowly pulled the trigger, thinking to draw it back only so far, to show him that she wasn’t playing around. As she did, his black eyes went wide.

  The two were connected by the paddle, each with a grip on one end, and when he dropped his side, it fell with a hollow thump on the front of the canoe. The night had become eerily silent, making that thump much greater sounding that it otherwise would be, and it caught Emily by surprise. She screamed and jerked just enough to pull the trigger the rest of the way.

  With a huge noise, the gun went off.

  What happened next didn’t correspond to the explosive sound. Blood didn’t go shooting out of the captain in a sickening fountain, and he didn’t go flying back. He didn’t cry out in pain or scream in fright. In fact, he didn’t even moan. There was such a lack of response that Emily thought that either she had missed him or the bullet had been a dud.

  His face took on a puckered look, as if he were about to scream at her. She was on the verge of apologizing when the other three Corsairs turned their rifles on her. They did so more or less from instinct. They certainly weren’t afraid of the girl. In the dark, none of the three saw the compact black gun.

  “What the hell, Cap’n?” Billy grumbled, thinking that he had fired the shot. “You coulda let us have our fun before you goin’ and shootin’ her. Cap’n? Cap’n?” The captain’s face continued to pucker until he looked like he was on the verge of erupting in curses or spit, or something, all over Emily.

  Before he could erupt, Billy shook his shoulder, and the captain started to fall face first into the water. Billy grabbed his arm and Rodrigo grabbed a leg. Standing tall behind them and peering beneath his heavy Cro-Magnon brow at Emily was Gavin Walker. He was gradually, perhaps even glacially, coming to the conclusion that it had been Emily who had done the shooting.

  When two was added to two and came out to four, it finally hit him. He blinked in surprise and pointed a finger at her. In turn, she pointed the Glock.

  “Look out!” he cried and brought up his M4 one-handed. They both fired at the same time, setting off a mad scramble, that was lit by the strobe of blasting guns. Because his shipmates were in the way, Gavin’s shots went wide, zipping harmlessly into the black water. Her third shot struck him in the stomach before plowing through his guts and lodging in his spine. In a blink, his left leg went perfectly numb and he collapsed.

  Confusion and high, frightened curses contended with the echoes bouncing off the cliff walls as Billy and Rodrigo trampled Gavin, fighting to get away from the girl. Billy even snatched Gavin’s M4 from his hand and fired over the bow, just missing the top of Emily’s head. She had been about to push away, only the bullets singeing a few hairs from her scalp told her that this would be a big mistake. Instead, she pulled herself close to the front of the boat and huddled there under the angry gaze of the captain, who still hadn’t moved.

  “You watch the left,” Billy hissed to Rodrigo, “I’ll watch the right.”

  Emily was now trapped. There was no direction she could move that was safe—and staying put would only keep her alive for maybe a minute longer. Eventually, the two Corsairs would realize her predicament and come for her. An idea struck her: she could slip out of the boat and take a stab at swimming for shore. Except the inlet did not have a real shore exactly. The closest land to her was a forty-foot sheer cliff face. And it was eighty yards away; she couldn’t hold her breath that long. But she could hold her breath long enough to get to the back of the boat, and once there…well, she didn’t know. She just knew that it had to be better than where she was. The Glock went into a zippered pocket and, using the boat hook to steady the canoe, she slid out of it and into the water.

  “Give up girl,” Rodrigo whispered, edging closer. “Don’t make things even worse for…”

  This was the last sound she heard. She took a deep breath and dove into the darkness, which seemed to go on forever. Above her the boat was black, below her the inlet could have been a thousand feet deep for all she knew. In seconds, she had lost the concept of up and down; she only knew forward, and had to hope she wasn’t swimming towards the bottom. Just then, her hand hit something. It was the keel! Relief swept her and drowned the panic that had hit her faster than she thought possible.

  Feeling almost giddy, she pushed off the keel, took three mighty strokes and smacked the rudder with the top of her head. She barely noticed the pain. Above her, the darkness took on a deep blue tint and she swam for it, breaking the surface as quietly as she could. In front of her, the inlet opened out onto Puget Sound, and somewhere in that immense maze was the only home she had ever known.

  She had to turn her back on her home, at least for now.

&
nbsp; In the last ten seconds, the Corsairs had only advanced two feet toward the front of the boat. They were whispering back and forth over the top of their wounded friend, who had curled into a ball and was just beginning to feel seriously afraid. The reason for his fear: he couldn’t feel any pain. “Is it bad?” Gavin asked, just as Emily slipped up the ladder at the back of the boat. He was ignored by everyone.

  Billy edged forward a little more, stood high on his tiptoes, raised the M4 over his head and fired across the bow. A second later, Rodrigo leaned way out from the side of the boat and shot the canoe. Ting! Ting! Ting!

  During all of this, Emily, looking like a bedraggled cat, calmly extracted the Glock and took aim at Billy, just as Jillybean had taught her. She stood with her legs staggered, a slight forward lean so that her nose was over her toes, her right bicep pressed to her chin.

  She let out a long, pent-up breath, and fired three times, knocking Billy off the boat, where he seemed to paw lazily at the water as if he didn’t care that he was sinking beneath the surface. Emily didn’t see if he went all the way under. She had turned the gun on Rodrigo, who was so much faster than she expected. In a blur, he spun and fired at the same time that she did.

  A frightened jerk caused her bullet to blaze over his head, while his shots bracketed her, one just missing her left side and the next her right. Two more of his shots were way off and, by the time he had corrected his aim, she was leaping down into the galley below deck where it was as dark as the water. She tried to slip to her right, but ended up hitting something with a heavy thud. Almost immediately, Rodrigo fired through the deck at her. He missed, the bullets blasting through the galley deck and out through the hull.

  Her first thought: We’re going to sink! went ignored as he fired three more times. Although he missed by a good five feet, she cringed and pointed her pistol up towards the little holes he had made. She didn’t fire, however. She couldn’t tell exactly where he was and was afraid that if she missed, he would zero in on her. She guessed that he hadn’t moved. The sound of his steps would have sifted down to her.