“But first,” Donald had said with an air of finality, “we have a battle to win and some people to rescue.”
The group hadn’t needed to be told twice. They’d taken their equipment, Molotov cocktails, weapons, and other explosives, down to the water’s edge where Donald, Henry, and Tally had found a boathouse stacked with abandoned boats used for urban kayaking trips, and made their way downriver to the harbor.
It had been a twenty-minute paddle across the flat calm of the waterway that led to the Jaxport Harbor. As they’d approached, they’d been able to see braziers burning at the front of the warehouse, leading on to where the main entrance was heavily guarded, but the water side of the facility had been deserted. The Harbormen hadn’t expected an attack from the water.
They’d tied up the open-framed kayaks right by the hull of a nearly overturned container ship that had spilled its contents over the quay. Moving against the darker blackness of the ship, they’d moved across the apron to the warehouse and set their charges. Falling back thirty yards in case of something going wrong after setting those charges had been the best decision they’d made that night. When Donald had lit the petrol-soaked rag in the top of a cocktail and launched it through the air, they’d had no idea what was about to happen.
The thermite had done its job precisely as Halley had expected it to and burned a hole through the thin metal of the warehouse wall, as if they’d cut it with a torch. Unfortunately, as they’d found out half a second later, there’d been a store of propane bottles placed behind it, and these blew apart in huge gouts of flame, tearing a hole in the wall which was the size God’s can opener would have made. Flames had scorched the concrete and overturned a row of industrial-size garbage cans. Smoke was punching up into the air, as well, ready to bruise the clouds.
The rush of heat and the whirling shrapnel went over their heads, raining down around them with a pattering of flaming debris. Through the hole in the side of the warehouse, Josh saw that fires had already been set off by the blast, and they could hear screams and handbells being rung to alert the people inside of the fires.
Halley looked at the huge hole in the side of the warehouse, the licking flames, and blackening propane bottles beyond it. “Perhaps a little more damage than I was expecting.”
“You don’t say,” Josh said, getting to his feet and brushing splinters of wood out of his hair.
The others were getting to their feet as well, checking their weapons and pulling Molotov cocktails from the crate in which they’d been transported.
“Everyone ready?” Josh asked.
Nods of affirmative assent came from around the assembled company. “We have a job to do,” Josh said, the fire from the warehouse crackling along with the quiet energy in his words. “You all know what you have to do. Let’s do it.”
And with that, they moved towards the flames.
6
Josh double-tapped once, then twice. Four shots total, each one impossibly loud in the confined space. Both Harbormen fell before they had a chance to return fire, their arms wheeling and their legs crumpling as they crashed into the walls.
Josh, Karel, Henry, and Ten-Foot, with Jingo on their six, moved as a unit down the corridor.
The hole they’d blown in the wall of the warehouse and the flames were behind them. The fire from the propane tanks hadn’t yet leaped across the divide to Gabe’s Jaxport palace, but it wouldn’t be long before that happened.
Donald, Poppet, Halley, Filly, and Martha were back there defending the exit for when Josh and the others would need to use it as an escape path.
Ten-Foot pointed ahead to the end of the corridor. “We turn right up ahead—Maxine and the others were kept there.”
The only light in the corridor came from guttering oil lamps which burned in soot-blackened glass. They were dotted down the corridor every ten yards or so, leaving a dark oily residue on the ceilings above them. There had been decorating work going on in this section of the castle—the walls were being painted royal blue with gold trim.
You couldn’t fault Gabe for his ambition, Josh thought dryly.
There were still handbells ringing in the distance as Harbormen were being called to fight the fire. If things went to plan, Donald’s group would engage them and keep them busy while Josh and the others got on with searching for Maxine, Storm, and the others.
They turned the corner and stopped. Josh took a second to process what he was seeing. Two Harbormen were down, injured, but not by gunfire. They had both been opened up across their chests with an unimaginable ferocity. And slithering in the blood between them, trying to get up while at the same time stem the flow of blood from a gaping wound in her neck, was Grace.
There had been some sort of fight here with knives or bare hands or a combination of both. Everyone had ended up injured—fatally. The Harbormen were dead and Grace was dying. Her lips aspirated droplets of blood as she tried to rise, her knees buckling after she managed to get up on them, causing her to fall forward again. Her eyes locked on Josh, and he felt the lightning of recognition fizzle between them. For a second, Grace’s eyes cleared and she nodded, almost just to herself, before she fell forward across the bloodied bodies of the Harbormen. Her hand twitched once and went still.
It was over in less than twenty seconds.
If this had happened to Grace, what might have befallen Maxine and Storm?
“Come on,” Josh said, stepping past the bodies and trying not to look down on the carnage, breath catching in his throat and his heart kicking up a quickstep in his chest.
They reached the corridor where Ten-Foot told them Maxine and the others had been kept. The doors were open and the rooms were empty.
“This is not what we needed to find!” Josh hissed, running his fingers through his hair. “Dammit all to hell!”
Karel turned to Ten-Foot. “Where else might they be? There’s no way they’re going to be outside the castle with the others, so where could they be?”
Ten-Foot shook his head. “Maxine was under guard the whole time. If she isn’t here, she’s going to be in the stateroom with Gabriel––other than that, I don’t know.”
Josh’s thoughts raced. “Wait. Grace was out of her room, right? And that was here, too?”
Ten-Foot pointed to the door into the middle room. “She should have been in there. They didn’t let her out, either. She was too crazy, man. Too crazy.”
“Then, if she’s out, there’s a good chance she escaped. And if Grace escaped, maybe it was Maxine who released her. Yes? Am I being crazy? Or does that follow?” Josh looked around the faces for someone, anyone, to tell him his thinking was sound.
Henry gave him the support he needed to accept his summation. “Yes. It’s possible.”
Josh fixed his attention on Ten-Foot. “If she was going to get out of here, which way would she go?”
“Not to the front entrance, that’s for sure,” the young man replied. “She’d not make it through the guards on the inner compound.”
“Then where? Come on, Ten-Foot––where? Think.”
“There’s no back way out. Nothing. You have to go through the front entrance. Past the staterooms, into the throne room, and out through the great hall. That’s the only way.”
“I know what I’d do,” Henry said.
All eyes turned to him.
“I’d create a diversion. I’d hide until there was a good chance of getting out unseen while they were dealing with something else.”
“Something like the diversion we’ve created at the back wall?” Josh said.
Henry nodded. “You got it.”
Josh began stalking off down the corridor, and the others followed his lead. “Then if she’s free, she’ll be biding her time near the entrance, waiting for her chance. So, that means she might be close by. Come on!”
The party picked up speed as they made their way towards the throne room. Almost immediately, they were forced to hang back as a phalanx of Harbormen carrying buckets of
water and fire extinguishers rushed along the main thoroughfare, too focused on their firefighting mission to check on who might or might not be crouched in a side corridor.
One last Harborman filed past, intent on getting to the emergency, and Ten-Foot pointed his SIG at him. Josh shook his head and pushed Ten-Foot’s arm down. “No,” he whispered, “let them go. We don’t need a battle here.”
Ten-Foot looked like Josh had just kicked his puppy, but he nodded.
When the fire detail had disappeared, Josh and the others jogged onto the thoroughfare. There were a few civilians there—cooks and servants rushing along with pails and more extinguishers, all of whom looked at them strangely but said nothing as they passed… obviously concluding that the heavily armed party wasn’t worth tackling right now. Josh waved them on with his pistol, and they rushed off with expressions of sheer relief on their faces. Josh wondered if they would even raise the alarm about them being there. Existing under the yoke of Gabe’s oppression would not be something anyone sane would welcome. Maybe the servants would welcome the castle burning down, though. Josh would have if he’d been in their place.
Ten-Foot led them down a wooden-walled cut that took them to the back of the dais where Gabe kept his throne. It was obviously the rat-run the king had used to spirit himself away with Storm and Maxine when Tally and the others had started firing.
There was a black drape pulled across the path, which Ten-Foot peeled back a corner of so that they could look over the throne room. They had a good view of the bleachers and the doors that led out to the hall, beyond which sat the entrance to the inner compound.
Josh hadn’t really taken much in when it came to the throne room before, and now as he looked over Ten-Foot’s shoulder along the length of it, he was struck by how completely absurd this fantastical construction was. All these people on the edge of survival had been forced to build it or face the murderous rage of one man who’d managed to convince a small army of thugs to follow him.
It was ever thus, wasn’t it? When people were scared and unsure, they would happily follow someone who told them they had all the answers. The whole edifice was a monument to a cracked ego, this castle a ludicrous construction which said everything that needed to be said about Gabe and the view he had of himself.
A ragged line of civilians was filing into the throne room from outside, encouraged forward by Harbormen at gunpoint. They were being brought in to fight the fires that must surely have been spreading by now, and coming with more buckets and containers of water which had fairly obviously been taken from the quayside. Other inhabitants of Jaxport were shuffling back the other way with empty containers and pails to go pick up more water to haul back inside.
Still, distant gunfire told Josh that Donald and his party were proving to be the thorn in the side of Gabe and his Harbormen, just as he’d hoped they would be.
Josh squinted along the line of Jaxport civilians as they were herded and kept moving by Harbormen.
And that’s when he saw Maxine.
She came out from the side of the bleachers and, keeping her head down, joined the line of people filing out towards the entrance. She didn’t have a bucket or extinguisher, but she was trying to hide that fact by walking close to the person in front of her so that he shielded her some as she walked quickly past Harbormen.
Then Josh saw Larry, three or four paces behind her and also walking empty-handed, with his head down and his shoulders bunched, as if we were expecting to be found out at any moment.
A cry from a Harborman froze the blood in Josh’s veins. As he watched, one came forward and struck Larry around the head, sending the old surgeon spinning to the ground in a sprawl of arms and legs. The Harborman drew his weapon and pointed it at the man. “Stop the line!” he shouted at his comrades. “This is one of the king’s prisoners! Search the line!”
The line halted. Faces turned back to the captors, sheened with sweat and grimed with soot. Everyone wore expressions that equaled masks of fear and anxiety. All except Maxine, who was burying her chin into her breastbone.
As Josh watched, Harbormen went down the line checking faces as they went. They would be on Maxine in seconds. He could see she was visibly shrinking where she stood. Trying to be invisible, trying to not been seen.
But it was far too late for that. A Harborman put his hand on her shoulder and pointed his Colt at her temple.
“Got her!” he shouted to the others. “I’ve got her!”
Maxine knew the hand was going to fall on her at any moment. She knew that she was going to be found out right here and right now.
So, she’d planned some contingencies. The concealed gun in her dress spat twice, and the Harborman went down with two bullets in his femur, screaming and rolling.
Maxine dove for the nearest bleacher, hitting the low front wall awkwardly and spinning over the top of it in an uncontrolled barrel roll that crashed her to the floor and sent the gun spinning out of her pocket and far from her grasp. She knew the game was up even before she tried looking around for the gun. It had fallen beneath a bench and clattered to the floor level under the bleachers. Now, not only had she shot up several Harbormen and knifed the King of America, but she was unarmed and at the mercy of the next Harborman to stick his gun over the wooden wall and shoot her where she lay.
Except that didn’t happen.
Volleys of shots rang out across the throne room. There was more screaming as bullets chewed into wood and metal. People were yelling and expressing shock. Two civilians dove over the wall ahead of her and lay down with their hands covering their heads, as if that would protect them from getting shot.
A battle had erupted all around them.
Harbormen were shouting and Harbormen were dying. One cartwheeled over the wall and fell dead on the second row of benches—that was how hard he’d been hit by the force of the bullets slamming into him. He stared at her with surprised, dead eyes.
Who was shooting at the Harbormen?
It had to be something to do with the explosions she’d heard just before she and Larry had decided to come hide beneath the bleachers. Her rough plan had been to wait there in the dusty dark until such time as they could style it out and escape through the front entrance.
She hadn’t wanted to shoot her way out unless it became absolutely necessary, and the lines of firefighting civilians had given her and Larry an excuse to at least get out of the building. Coming out and joining the line had obviously been a risk, but she’d hoped that, in the confusion, they’d be able to keep their heads down, and it had worked… for thirty seconds.
Maxine was too well known in the castle, even with her head down and trying not to make eye contact; it seemed they could have said the same for Larry, too. Gabe’s commanders had chosen their Harbormen well. They were observant. She guessed they had to be because their lives depended on it.
But there was no time now to consider the whys of this. Now was the time to focus on the whats.
What the hell am I going to do to get out of this?
Bullets chewed up benches five rows above her. She heard a body thud against the other side of the wooden wall where she lay.
“Maxine! Maxine!”
She blinked at the shouting voice. Josh?
A shadow fell across her and, as she looked up, Josh’s stubble-grizzled chin and a face framed by sweat-damp hair came into focus.
He was reaching a hand down to pull her up.
And the shooting had stopped.
“Get up! Now!”
She felt his hand hook into the material of her dress, and then she was up on her knees and climbing up over the barrier.
In the thirty or so seconds she’d been behind the wall, there had been something of a change in the balance of power in the throne room. Bodies in red uniforms lay all over, most at crazy angles. Blood ran from their frames as if their clothes were melting.
The civilian firefighters had scattered and run. Pails of water had been left rolling empty on the
water-slick floorboards of the throne room.
Maxine found her feet and started to open her mouth. And then she saw him. He was standing over the body of Larry. Larry, who was dead—his chest a mincemeat of cotton and flesh and seeping blood.
That villain was standing over him. Standing over her friend. Ten-Foot. The Harborman who’d taken her and Storm from Cumberland and dropped them into the lap of the insane King of America.
Maxine didn’t speak to Josh. Instead, she bent, picked up a discarded gun, and pointed it at Ten-Foot.
In the next moment, Josh crashed into her and the pistol fired up into the ceiling as she was forced sideways and her arm went up. “What are you doing? It’s him, it’s Ten-Foot! He’s killed Larry!”
Josh shook his head as he twisted the gun from her grasp and pulled her to him so that Maxine’s face was crushed against his chest. Josh’s voice sounded a million miles away. “It’s okay. I promise. He’s one of us now. He didn’t kill Larry. I promise. Now, come on. We’ve got to find Storm and get out of here.”
Maxine knew that she could stay and argue, or sit on this for now and focus on finding Storm. In reality, there was only one choice. She relaxed and let Josh begin pulling her away, back towards the dais and the curtains behind the throne. The others followed, making sure they wouldn’t yet be discovered by any other Harbormen who weren’t fighting the fire.
They leaped up onto the stage, came through the drapes, and made it into the escape cut behind the throne.
Ten-Foot came to Maxine as soon as they crossed the threshold. “I know you’ve got more than enough reason for wanting me dead, lady, but I swear, Gabe is my enemy as much as he is yours. I didn’t kill your friend, the surgeon. I was trying to work out if we could save him.”
Supernova EMP Seriries (Book 4): Final End Page 6
