Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge

by Richardson, Marcus

  "Where is he? Where's his report? I want to hear his report," Cisco demanded.

  “No can do," Jenkins said with a casual drawl. "Your friend skewered him like a pig." Jenkins couldn't help but laugh at his own witticism.

  Cisco frowned. "What do you mean skewered him?"

  Jenkins shrugged one shoulder. "I mean, she sharpened a stick and drove it right through his gut—didn't stop till she hit his spine." He shook his head. “She’s hardcore, boss.”

  "He still alive?" asked Cisco, horrified at the thought.

  "Nope. I went out looking for him, like you said, and heard a couple gunshots off to the north. Or thought I did.”

  "That's where you found him?"

  Jenkins fished in his pocket and pulled out a snub nosed .38 revolver. He tossed it on the corrugated metal floor before Cisco's feet with a thunk. "He was shooting that piece of crap after she stabbed him.”

  "Why didn't he shoot her in the face when he had the chance?” Cisco demanded as he bent to retrieve the revolver.

  Jenkins shrugged. “I have no idea."

  Cisco examined the wet gun in his hands and checked the cylinder. "Shot his whole load, huh?”

  Jenkins grunted. "There's more—he went out with an AR. Ain't nothing near him now.”

  Cisco grimaced. "Now she's got a rifle? This day just keeps getting better…”

  "Well the storm ain't helping, that's for sure,” Jenkins groused. “Wind keeps gettin’ stronger. Rain coming down so hard now it feels like you're being hit with sandpaper. Hurts like nothing else I've ever felt."

  Cisco sat down behind his makeshift desk and studied the county map again. He placed the revolver on the northern part, about where the words Rolling Hills were, and traced a finger down to Bee’s Landing. “I’ve been thinking…we’re gonna use the storm to our advantage."

  Jenkins ambled over and looked down at the map. "How's that? Ain't no way we can make it through that forest heading east—we’d be walking right into the teeth of the storm. There's already a good number of men in the group that don't want to be doing nothin’ but hunkering down. After I've been out there in this," he said with a hand toward the window, "I'm partially inclined to side with them. It ain't fit for man or beast out there.”

  "But she's out there," Cisco snarled as he looked up at his lieutenant. "You tellin’ me she's a better man than you are?"

  Jenkins snorted, unfazed. "Might not be smarter, that's for sure. I ain’t going back out there, ese. Can’t hardly get that door open,” he said, gesturing at the MRAP’s rear hatch. “You stay in here much longer, and you’ll be trapped in here."

  Cisco waved off his complaints with a dismissive hand. "That's not what I mean. We know this is a hurricane, right?"

  His second in command nodded but remained silent.

  Cisco continued. "Well, hurricanes got a clear space in the middle of ‘em. The eye. That’s usually when people come out and look around, poke through the damage and check on their house, right? Then they run back inside and batten down the hatches before the second half of the storm hits."

  Jenkins scoffed. "Yeah, and?"

  "That's when we make our move."

  "You want to hit Bee’s Landing during the eye?” Jenkins put his hands on his skinny hips. “Look, the eye doesn’t last that long—”

  "No, I'm not talking about attacking during the eye—that’d give Flynt too much of an advantage. I don't want him to be able to see us coming.” Cisco shook his head. "No, I want us to start moving before the eye gets here. I want to be in place and ready to attack his house, then wait for the storm to come back."

  "You wanna attack in the middle of the second half of the storm?"

  Cisco grinned. “Either the beginning of the second half, or the tail end. Not when it's at its worst, obviously. I want to hit them when they're focused on the weather and not worried about us. I want to hit them when they think they're safe."

  "We'll have to move in the middle of the storm…” Jenkins mused.

  "Won't be easy, but I'll find a way to motivate them." Cisco tapped the revolver on the makeshift desk.

  "And once we take over, then what?"

  "Then we divvy up the prisoners and loot. I take over Lavelle's house, and everybody gets a house. It becomes our neighborhood."

  "What are we gonna do with the prisoners? Gonna be a lot of mouths to feed,” Jenkins warned.

  “We’ll need a lot of people to grow crops for us, carry stuff, and do all the chores—won't we?” Cisco countered.

  “Sounds good…” Jenkins allowed after a moment. “But how do we do it?"

  Cisco frowned and looked up. "I've been thinking about it. We’re down to what, 18 fighters now?" He shook his head. “We definitely don't have the ability to hit ‘em head on. We’ll split up into two teams. I lead one, you lead one."

  "Going on foot?”

  Cisco nodded. “We have to take out Flynt first. I doubt Lavelle will survive in the woods out there to make it back to the neighborhood. At any rate, she went north, we’ll beat her there or meet her in the woods. Soon as it lets up out there, we move."

  “So we’re just forgetting about her?”

  Cisco looked at the map and smiled in such a way that it made Jenkins take a half step back. “Oh, I’m not forgettin’ about her, ese.”

  Chapter 15

  Fort Sumter

  Charleston Harbor, South Carolina

  Reese nudged Jo with one sore hand. “Wake up,” he croaked.

  She groaned and rolled over in their camp of broken bricks and rubble from the night before. “Why?”

  Reese rubbed his hands together and sat up, then winced, and put pressure on his lower back to ease the pain. "I tell you what, sleeping on rocks sure didn't help my back any." In the dim light, he blinked and tugged on the first aid backpack. "You got anything in here to start a fire?"

  "Probably a lighter in there…” she mumbled. “Why’d I ever let you convince me this hole in the wall was a good idea last night?”

  Reese snorted. “Because it was better than laying on the ground out in the storm?”

  Jo winced as she sat up, her face just visible in the scant light that crept in through the opening. “Oh. Right,” she said over the constant keening of the wind as it whistled past the partially collapsed doorway to the parade ground. “Well…at least we stayed dry.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Reese said as he dug in the pack, tilting the opening toward the gap in the wall where they'd squeezed into the interior of the fort. The constant drama of the ocean slamming against the outer wall had given him a terrible headache, but his first priority was to get a fire going. They needed to dry out before they could think about exploring the rest of the fort or finding a way to the mainland.

  "Well," he admitted a few moments later. "There's no lighter, but I did find a ferro rod…”

  “A ferret did what, now?" asked Jo as she sat up and rubbed her face. "First you don’t let me sleep, then you start talking gibberish..."

  "A ferrocerium rod. You strike it with a piece of stainless steel and it creates sparks." He looked around in the dim light of their little brick-lined cave.

  “Oh, a spark stick.”

  Reese looked at her. "Come on, help me find some wood or something. Gotta be tinder in here—these walls are several feet thick, and I bet it hasn’t rained in here in a long time."

  Jo sat up and shoved a slop of seaweed toward him. "Forgot about the tsunami already? I bet this whole place was underwater..."

  Reese's shoulders slumped. "Well," he said as he stood. "It's not like the fort was submerged for days or anything, right? The waves probably crashed over and then went around. Who knows how tall they were when they hit here, though."

  He tripped on some bricks and stumbled forward, then caught himself at the entrance to their little hidey-hole. Reese narrowed his eyes. "Looks like the wind’s dying down considerably. Not much rain." He looked over his shoulder. "We might be getting close to the e
ye.”

  “Then what?” Jo asked.

  He turned back to Jo. “If this thing hit us dead on, we’re going to have a couple hours of daylight pretty soon. We need to make our move."

  Jo got up and slung the first aid kit over her shoulder, then pulled the campaign hat back on her head. "So, what's the plan?"

  Reese looked out the gap and squeezed through. He stretched in the stiff breeze and relished the fact that it wasn't strong enough to blow them over. "Maybe it's just the walls that are blocking the wind," he said as Jo emerged into the dim daylight. "But I think those clouds don't look as bad as they did yesterday. Am I crazy?"

  "Yes, and no, I don't think they look as bad, either. "

  Reese glanced at Jo askance. "Come on, let's go check out the tanker. That's probably our best bet."

  "Does this place have, like, a gift shop or something?" asked Jo as they picked their way through the pools that had formed in the parade ground amidst piles of rubble and rock.

  "Well yeah,” Reese called over his shoulder. “But it's on the other side of the island, and I doubt it would've survived.” He walked over to the great hull and looked up at the towering skyscraper sized structure above him. "It's like an office building fell over on its side..."

  "How the heck are we supposed to get up on that?" asked Jo as she stood next to him with her hands on her hips.

  "Well, the whole front end is snapped off over there..." Reese said, pointing down the side of the damaged, glistening steel hull. "We could probably walk right into the ship and figure out a way to climb to the top. Come on, let's check it out."

  "Why do I get the feeling I'm going to regret this?" Jo muttered to herself.

  The supertanker had indeed snapped roughly in half upon reaching Fort Sumter. The impact had broken the big vessel’s back and spilled the contents of more than a dozen decks of gear, food supplies, medical supplies, thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, oil, and hundreds of cargo containers. The debris field created a mountain of garbage that filled the fort's parade ground.

  They had to climb up and over several shipping containers to even reach the exposed deck structure on the aft end of the supertanker. Some 20 feet up in the air, Reese turned and looked at the devastation that filled the interior of Fort Sumter.

  He pointed. "Hey, look at that—the bow of this thing smashed right into the far wall over there. Looks like it tried to go all the way through the fort."

  Jo puffed and caught her breath, hands on her knees. "Boy, am I glad we weren't here to see that."

  "You and me both," Reese said. "Come on, I think we can make it inside the ship if we jump right here. Can you make that?" Reese asked as he pointed at a 4 foot gap between the edge of the shipping container and the jagged edge of the deck plating that stuck out, exposed to the air like the broken ribs of a dead whale. He gingerly flexed his injured arm. Maybe it wasn’t broken after all. He swallowed.

  It’ll be hard to fix if it’s broken…I can deal with this…

  Jo twisted her trunk and stretched her knees. "Probably...just give me a minute to warm up. How’s the arm?"

  Reese grunted. "All right, I guess. Not much I can do about it, you know? Okay, I'll go on across and help you from the other side." Reese steadied himself for a moment on the not quite stable pile of shipping containers, then jumped forward. He sailed over empty space and kept his eyes forward as he landed on the slippery deck, but still managed to smack his head on a pipe hanging from the ceiling. He caught himself, then turned.

  "All right, it's kind of clear—and the deck is slippery. Also, there's a big pipe hanging down right here about 3 feet on the inside. Just watch your head when you jump..."

  Jo nodded, tied her campaign hat around her chin, then backed up a few steps. The cargo container shifted under the imbalance of weight, and metal groaned against metal. Jo threw her arms out to stabilize herself, then squealed in terror as the pile shifted.

  "Run! Go!" Reese urged, as he leaned out over the gap and reached with his free hand.

  Jo's eyes were wide as she plodded to the edge of the shipping container and launched herself into the air. As her wet hand slapped Reese on his forearm. He gripped her tight and absorbed the impact of her body as she slammed into him. They both tumbled back, but managed to stay safely aboard the ruined tanker.

  To the thunder of groaning metal and popping rivets, the pile of shipping containers collapsed in on itself in a plume of kicked up sea spray.

  "Let's not make it that close anymore, okay?" Jo said as she staggered to her feet. "Deck’s kind of tilted in here...I ain’t too sure I'm liking this..."

  Reese stood and laughed again as he dusted his legs. "Well, better than being out there..." The pile of shipping containers had tumbled down to ground level. Dust swirled in the air. One of the containers had ripped open, spilling its cargo of brightly colored stuffed animals in fantastical shapes and sizes.

  "Why couldn't it have been beans or bullets or something...?" Jo moaned as she leaned over the edge and looked down. "You know we’re going to have a hard time getting out of here."

  "We'll figure something out. In the meantime, let's check this place out. Who knows, maybe there's even some survivors."

  Jo turned and visibly shivered. "Don't say that. The only light coming in here is from that porthole way up yonder. I swear, this looks like a set of a zombie movie I saw once."

  "Didn't take you for a horror fan?" Reese said as they walked off toward the interior of the ship, their heels ringing off the deck and echoing all around them.

  "I ain’t, but when you're trapped in Maine and the wind comes howling, there ain't much on TV worth watching."

  "Look at that," Reese said after they'd gone 20 or 30 feet into the darkness. “Looks like stairs."

  Light slanted in through a jagged tear in the ship’s hull and shone down the corner of the stairwell that curved up into the bowels of the ship. Reese tested the stairs for sturdiness and found them secured well to the deck and ceiling. He climbed up, followed by Jo, as she clomped her way up the metal stairs.

  "Should we be trying to go all quiet like?" Reese said over his shoulder in a low voice.

  "Shoot no," Jo said in her normal talking voice, which echoed up and down the stair well. "I seen enough of these movies to know you don't want to be sneaking up on no zombies. We make enough noise, they'll come to us and we’ll hear ‘em a long ways off."

  Reese laughed. "There's no such thing as zombies, Jo."

  "Yeah, well, two weeks ago I would've said there ain't no such thing as a wave that could bring the United States to its knees."

  They walked up, deck after deck, in silence. Reese stopped trying to be quiet, and his footsteps clomped down the metal stairs, and the two of them made an awful racket as they headed up toward the top deck.

  Soaked in sweat from traveling up the humid, darkened stairwell, Reese was grateful to find a partially open hatch on what he hoped was the main deck. He stood next to it and wiped sweat from his face, then placed his hands on the cool metal, and narrowed his eyes at the rust flecked, peeling paint. “You ready?" he asked when Jo stood beside him and had a chance to catch her breath. She nodded.

  Reese pushed, but the door didn't budge. He adjusted his stance, glanced at her with a reassuring look, then pushed harder. Again, the door didn't budge. A keening whistle of wind echoed through the stairwell as air pressure pushed through the little gap between the edge of the hatch and the doorway.

  "You want me to push?" Jo asked with a smile in her voice.

  Reese grumbled and cursed to himself, then placed his shoulder against the hatch, planted his legs firmly, and pushed with everything he had. The hatch creaked open. With a tremendous, high-pitched squeal of rusted metal, the hinges popped free and the door slowly opened. Light flooded in along with a slight breeze as Reese forced the hatch all the way open and stepped out onto the listing deck.

  The floor rose at a slight angle, not enough to make walking difficult, just
treacherous. He grabbed the rusted pipe railing across the walkway and stifled a scream of pain. His tortured arm rebelled against the movement, but he pulled himself through the hatch nonetheless, then reached back a hand to help Jo navigate the slope of the deck. He could deal with his arm if they survived.

  "Well, this is gonna be fun," Jo said as she leaned over the side and looked down at the dizzying drop to the rubble-strewn hole in the fort’s wall where the tanker had busted through. Not 20 feet to their left, the ocean howled and surged, hissing and pummeling the side of the fort. "The butt end of this thing looks like it's a clear 20 feet out of the water."

  Reese turned and asked. "Well, there's the wheelhouse. We should probably start our search there. Maybe there's some emergency supplies or something along the way. Look at that," Reese said as he pointed down their direction of travel. "Man, the deck twists almost flat. Like the tsunami tried to turn this thing into a corkscrew."

  "What do you think our chances are this thing is gonna snap when we get back there? Probably drop us in the ocean outside of the fort..." Jo commented nonchalantly as they navigated their way down the twisted, warped walkway.

  Moving hand over hand, to make sure they kept a solid attachment point to the railing on the extreme edge of the ship, it only took them a few minutes to get through the rough spot before the deck leveled out. Reese paused to jump up and down a few times, and the sound of his shoes echoed across the open space.

  "What are you doing?" Jo hissed.

  “You’re the one that said make noise for the zombies," Reese said. He jumped one more time and slammed his feet down as hard as he could. "Deck’s not moving at all. I didn't think that a couple people could break the back of this thing, but I wanted to be sure we didn't get too far out over the water if it was gonna fall apart, you know?"

  "I saw Titanic," Jo replied. "I don't want to have a personal experience with that movie..."

  Reese laughed and led the way back toward the wheelhouse. They looked left, over the gaping hole that once was the inner hold of the cargo ship. Dozens of busted shipping containers, each the size of a tractor-trailer, lay jumbled together in the bottom of the ship, streaked with shadows and light that barely penetrated the cavernous hold. "Sure wouldn’t have wanted to be down there when this thing hit."