But even the proximity of death could not save the cop from the brute force of the pain being visited on everyone in the lobby.
Maxine lay on the floor as the headache spiked downward, and she held onto Storm’s hand. The boy had thudded to his knees. With his other hand, he was rubbing furiously at his temple, trying to erase the pain beneath the skin.
Maxine pulled herself up onto one knee as the attack in her head began to subside. She estimated that it had lasted no more than twenty seconds, and although she couldn’t be immediately sure, that seemed a lot shorter than the first attack had been. It didn’t really mean a lot to her now, how long it had lasted, but she was trying to focus on something other than the blood and chaos around her.
Storm also got to his feet. “What should I do?”
Maxine looked around. She wanted Storm where she could see him, and close at hand. A young girl without any obvious signs of injury lay against a wall by the elevators. She appeared unconscious. “Go check her out,” she directed her son. “Remember your ABCs.”
Maxine had drummed first responder lore into both her children over the years, and they’d soaked it up like sponges. Tally’s hobbies included parkour and many other urban sports, and although she’d been relatively unscathed, there had been a succession of nasty fractures around her. Storm, a track athlete in the making before the cancer had hit, also volunteered as a steward at Morehead City sporting occasions, and there were often minor or not so minor injuries to deal with.
Maxine considered Storm as he fixed his gaze on her. There was worry and concern in his eyes. She knew that, pretty soon now, Storm’s adrenaline wouldn’t be able to compete with the chemotherapy he’d had that day. Though the worst effects of if wouldn’t hit him for maybe twenty-four hours, checking over the girl would at least mean he could do something now. Before he was no longer able to. “If the ABCs are alright, just check the limbs and head for injury and get her into the recover position, okay?”
Storm nodded, and with that he walked over to the girl and knelt beside her.
Maxine turned to the lobby at large, trying to maintain the focus she’d managed to find in the last minute. There was a dull throbbing in her head, but it was nothing like what she’d experienced already.
Other people were getting to their feet, some of them collapsing onto sofas while holding their heads. The cop who lay half in and half out of his car had stopped moving.
Priorities.
A young man in a cheap suit with a plastic lanyard around his neck was trapped beneath the wood and metal of the check-in desk. The impact of the police car had torn it away from its moorings, upended it, and sent it crashing into him. He was beneath slabs of wood and steel tubing, and surrounded by smashed glass. His face was cut, and there was a stud of crystal almost in the center of his forehead—surrounded by blood, but looking for all the world like it had been placed there deliberately.
Focus.
Maxine strode across the lobby. In ten paces, she was kneeling by the young man. His lanyard had a laminated photograph of his face on it, smiling, and without the glass in his forehead. His name was Ben Grange, and he worked for the hotel as a ‘Reception Operative.’
“Hey Ben, I’m Maxine. I’m a nurse. How you doing there?”
Ben’s eyes moved around, but they focused on her. That was a good sign. He’d taken quite a hit when the cop car had made its unscheduled reservation in the lobby, but apart from understanding the piece of glass from the top of the check-in desk, his brain was working okay.
“I… can’t… can’t… move my legs. The police car… it hit the… desk… I was behind it… I don’t know what… happened to Mr. Crane… was checking in…”
Another plus. He may be trapped, but he was aware of his situation. “I’m just going to check you over; is that okay? I’m a nurse,” she repeated.
Ben managed to nod.
Maxine got as far as feeling down Ben’s arms for breaks before a roar of desperate anger and unalloyed hatred ripped through the air, almost as if it was directly behind her. Maxine was so shocked by the sound that she flinched, and her hands contracted on Ben’s arms.
Ben’s eyes widened, but not because she’d hurt him as she’d flinched and squeezed; he’d reacted to what he was looking at directly over her shoulder. “Oh my god…” he breathed out, and he shook off Maxine’s hand so he could raise a finger.
Maxine swung her head. It took a second to register what she was seeing. A suited man with a shock of red hair, and a face almost as red, was pulling a length of steel frame from the guts of a destroyed lobby sofa. He gripped it and hefted it up with all the determination of a top-order baseball player, and stalked towards where Storm was kneeling next to the girl. “Leave her alone, you goddamn pervert! Leave her alone! I’m gonna kill ya! I’m gonna kill ya!”
3
The breeze was stiffening across the deck. He’d finally managed to get to his feet, though, and Tally was using him like a fire escape to climb back to hers.
She put a hand to her temple.
“What was that? I just… I can’t…”
Josh shook his head. “I don’t know… but man, it hurt like hell.”
The Sea-Hawk’s sails were full-bellied in the wind, and he could hear the prow of the ship scything through the waves at a steady lick. The weather had been kind to them on the first five days of the trip and hadn’t once hit them with more than a kiss on the cheeks of the rigging, but Josh could feel the ship moving a little faster than normal, and there was a definite rise and fall to the deck—one that was just outside his experience.
Bodies still littered the deck, a mixture of the eleven crew and ten probationers who had travelled with Josh from the Morehead City port. They were an assortment of shapes, sizes, sexes, and ethnicities, with ripe nicknames and attitudes to match—Puck, Banger, Lemming, Dotty-B, Scally, Lash, and KK to name just seven—and some, like Ten-Foot, Goober, and Marshal, had been released after serving time in the pen while others had come into the probation system directly from the courts, for supervision in the community. Their crimes ranged from internet fraud through aggravated burglary, drug couriering, and robbery equipped with knives or other non-ballistic weaponry. None had been convicted or arrested for firearms offences, but several of the six boys and four girls would be heading in that direction if their lifeline of a gang affiliation hadn’t been interrupted by the courts—and the probation officers like Josh. None of the probationers were over eighteen, and so they’d not been deemed too far gone into their criminal careers to be unable to be brought back from the brink.
The trip on the Sea-Hawk, a built from scratch Baltimore Clipper constructed as a piece of living history, provided team building exercises, not to mention adventurous experiences away from the city and the peer pressures therein. Each probationer knew that if they didn’t keep their noses clean, their freedom could be revoked at any time—and the hefty prison sentence, held off by their compliance with Josh’s program—could be brought back into force at any time.
The kids—and Josh couldn’t get out of the habit of calling them that, because their ages were so close to those of his own children—were also recovering in the same way that he and Tally were.
Devon ‘Banger’ Nash, a broad-shouldered street crook, was rubbing his eyes, and Lash Rochelle was holding her stomach like she’d been kicked. Kimberly ‘KK’ Kyle hadn’t yet tried to sit up, but was drumming her fingers on the deck.
The deck lights, which had been dimmed to their lowest so there’d be no light pollution to interrupt the view of the Barnard cloud, were suddenly turned back on to their fullest, and the stars in the sky were effectively turned off.
“Everyone back below decks. Back to your bunks!” Captain Rollins, a man built tall and thick as the main mast of the clipper was getting up off his knees, putting his cap back on with one hand as he flicked the deck lights on with the other. “I reckon we might have hit a bank of gas or something like it. A submarine shi
ft in the geology, or maybe a vent from a gas container ship. Everyone, get off the deck and below…”
Tally looked at Josh. “But you were below decks already… did the same thing happen to you?”
Josh nodded and waved to Rollins thirty feet away as he began walking unsteadily towards him, Tally hanging onto his proverbial coat tails. “I don’t think it’s gas, Captain. I—”
Rollins waved his hand dismissively as Josh got closer. He was in no mood to argue. “There’s only one captain here, Mr. Standing, and if I say to get everyone below decks, I’ll thank you to follow my lead. Get your probationers below. Now!”
Other crew members were coming to their senses. The crew were, like Rollins, dressed in period garb. Voluminous white shirts below sheepskin jerkins, polka dot neckerchiefs, and seafarers’ caps. They were rubbing their heads, and when they realized their skulls were still connected to their bodies, some of them began trying to round up the probationers; others checked ropes and sheets while still another staggered back to the exposed wheel at the stern of the Sea-Hawk, but as if he’d been on the rum and was more than a little worse for wear.
“Mr. Mate!” Rollins hollered at his second in command, Petersen. “Get on the radio! Put out a mayday—we don’t know as yet what caused this. See what’s what in the area. We might need to warn other shipping.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” Peterson, a bluff, middle-aged Scandinavian seaman with, as he’d told Josh, a million years of service in the Merchant Marines, took his thin beanpole of a body past Josh and Tally towards the ladder down to the communications room where Josh had been speaking to Storm.
Josh, with Tally in tow, stopped by Rollins, who was looking up at the three masts towering one hundred feet above them. The breeze was still increasing, and the sails strained at the spars, ropes thrumming. Rollins licked at his lips, his fingers twisting together in front of him and belying the anxiety he was trying to keep locked down. Josh had seen similar behaviors from people attempting to keep a handle on their fears and worries. They might talk the talk, but flicking fingers, a trembling knee, and dry lips being swept with a tongue would give the game away every time. Rollins was a man who didn’t feel as in control as he might like to portray.
“I think he’s dead, Captain.”
Rollins blinked, his eyes flicking from side to side.
Josh looked beyond Rollins to where another of the crew, Spackman—a wry Jamaican in his early thirties with a wispy goatee and quick eyes—was closing the lids on the face of a broken corpse. It was the body of one of the crew. Kip Daniels had been twenty-eight, and he’d taken a shine to Tally from day one. Tally had enjoyed the distraction, Josh knew, but Kip had been far too dreamy and flighty to really amuse or engage her. And now he was dead, laying in a spreading pool of blood, head at an unnatural angle. He’d fallen from the mast and smashed into the deck.
Tally gasped. “Kip… he’d been up there showing off, calling down to me. The headache… it must have…”
She buried her face in Josh’s shoulder as Spackman pulled a small length of sail from the repair box and covered the body.
“Man… that’s gotta smart,” said Ten-Foot.
Dolan ‘Ten-Foot’ Snare.
Of course, it was Ten-Foot.
Ten-Foot was the eldest and biggest of the probationers. He’d been a handsome African-American before serious scars had been visited upon his cheeks by rival gang members. Now, his head was shaved—purposefully, Josh had considered, so that you had no choice but to focus on the scars. And now Ten-Foot’s lopsided mouth moved like a flapping scar amongst the other gouges on his face, his dark brown eyes shifting fast as bullets from the shrouded dead crewman to Tally.
“Looks like your boyfriend’s really fallen for ya.”
Josh felt Tally stiffen. Suddenly, he remembered what Rollins had asked them to do, and fixed his eyes directly on Ten-Foot. “Shut up. Get below decks.”
“There’s only one captain here.” Ten-Foot winked, doing a fair approximation of Rollins’ voice. He was one of those boys who, if you didn’t know his past, didn’t know what he’d been doing or what he was capable of, you could really like.
“And I’m telling you to get below, mister, or you’ll be ‘Five-Foot’ by the time I’ve finished with you!” Rollins was pointing at Ten-Foot, his finger trembling, his eyes wild. Spittle flying from the corners of his mouth.
Since the start of the voyage, Josh had found Rollins to be a hard but fair man, with a twinkle in his eye and a fair sense of humor; but above all, Rollins was a calm man, a man who knew how to maintain discipline among his crew and the probationers. They’d all, Josh thought, come to respect the man greatly as the probationers had settled down, losing the distraction of their cell phones as the coast of North Carolina had drifted off beyond the horizon and the Sea-Hawk had sent her two-hundred-foot hull speeding into the wide Atlantic. Yes, Rollins might be angered and shaken by the unnecessary death of his crewman, but there was something wild about his eyes that didn’t ring right to Josh. He disentangled himself from Tally’s arms and stepped forward.
“Captain Rollins, let me deal with the probationers please. They are my responsibility. I’ll see that Mr. Snare…”
“Ten-Foot,” spat Dolan ‘Ten-Foot’ Snare.
Josh plowed on, ignoring the shaven-headed probationer, “I’ll see to it that we get below and, once we have discussed the situation, I’m sure he’ll happily come and apologize…”
The punch came out of nowhere and snapped Josh’s head back—he fell to the decking as Tally yelled her rage towards the perpetrator. Josh was seeing stars, and not the ones high above in the night sky. He got up on his elbow and looked directly at Ten-Foot. Hitting Josh would send him back to prison without a second thought, and he knew Ten-Foot knew that. He’d thought he was smarter than that, but the kid was clearly upset. Josh would have to defuse the situation as quickly as possible, keep a lid on Ten-Foot until they finished the trip, and perhaps find some way to help him make reparations before Josh made his final report.
All these thoughts had flown through Josh’s mind before he realized with a thud of shock that Ten-Foot had not been close enough to punch him.
It had been Rollins. He’d stepped in out of the periphery of his vision as Josh had concentrated on Ten-Foot, and delivered a thumping blow to the side of Josh’s head.
Rollins, who was now stepping forward to straddle Josh, arms curved like an ape’s with his fists ready to strike. “You will do as I order! There will be no mutiny on my ship!”
Tally came forward to try to protect her father, arms raised, while Ten-Foot took two steps back. Rollins bore down on Josh, his fist almost whistling like a cartoon as Josh tried to raise his arms and kick out with his feet.
The blow never landed.
“Captain!” Spackman was holding Rollins’ arm back, the fist just inches from Josh. Josh rolled away and leapt to his feet.
“Calm down, Captain, please!” Spackman’s face was full of shock and fear. He seemed as surprised at Rollins’ actions as Josh had been. Tally, bless her, moved between Rollins and Josh, fists raised and her legs in a fighting stance. Along with parkour, climbing, and other urban sports, kickboxing was another of her hobbies.
Rollins’ face offered a map of the route to the Land of Rage. He stared incredulously from Spackman’s hand on his arm up to Spackman’s wide-eyed face. And then Rollins swung his free hand at the crewman. Spackman dodged the blow easily as he released his captain and stepped back.
“Captain Rollins!” Josh had regained some of his composure, and joined Tally by her side. “You may be in charge here, but something is happening which neither I nor you understand. You think it might be gas or something of that nature, but I’m not so sure. The one thing I do know is that we all need to calm down, and you need to stop hitting people, or I will make sure you’re arrested for assault by Morehead City PD the second we make it back to port. I brought these probationers here on this trip to show th
em there are other ways to look at life, beyond violence; I didn’t expect them to be right back in the gutter.”
And with those words, Josh checked himself.
He had no idea where the anger in that speech had come from. As an ex-cop, conflict resolution had been one of his major skills back in the police department days. Helping everyone to stay calm under pressure and deescalating a bad situation was never achieved by shouting or making threats, as he had done there. That was Situation Control 101.
What the hell was going on? It was like twenty years of his professional law enforcement smarts had been thrown over the side of the ship in one fell swoop.
And what was Tally doing getting into a fighting stance like that? Yes, she was brave as a lion and fearless as a hungry wolf, but like Josh, she was firmly of the speak first, fight last school.
Rollins’ fists were still bunched, his face puce with rage. His eyes darted from Spackman to Ten-Foot to Josh in a never-ending motion that seemed to telegraph the fact that he was confused as to who to strike first.
The recovering crew and the probationers were on the periphery of this, too, all looking fearful and confused. Not only had they all been struck down by the crushing headaches, but now the situation was being layered over with near insanity.
Josh took a breath, and began in his head to count to ten to calm himself as best he could before he attempted to take charge of the situation.
He only got to count to six.
“There’s no signal, Captain! The satellite set is kaput!” Petersen, blonde hair fluttering in the breeze, was making his way back across the deck.
Rollins blinked. For a moment, he wore the face of someone baffled to find themselves where they were, as if being forced to wake up from a deep sleep and still wrapped in the tatters of dreams.
Then, Rollins grasped a nearby rope and sagged. He sighed and wiped a hand across his mouth. The moment stretched out and caused a vacuum that someone needed to fill.
Supernova EMP Series (Book 1): Dark End Page 3
