“This is pretty much everything we have that Storm needs. It’ll keep you going for a month or so.”
“A month? You think this might last that long…?”
“Let’s be on the safe side, shall we? His body, especially his immune system, will have taken a terrible hit from the chemo, and we don’t know how long it will be before things get back on an even keel. The longer he takes the antibiotics, even as prophylaxis, will keep his system topped up and ready to fight whatever comes his way.”
That made sense to Maxine, and she nodded as she took the bag, which was lumpy and heavy against her shoulder. “So, now we’ve barricaded the stairs and the elevators, how do we get out of here?”
“This way.”
Sudhindra led Maxine to the very end of the facility, past the day-stay beds, syringe drivers, family waiting areas, play pens for children, and piles of toys for those who wanted or needed the distraction. Storm would play checkers with any of the kids who were there with him on the same day. Sometimes letting them win to their howls of delight at beating a grown-up, and sometimes, when pride got the better of him, wiping them off the board with just a couple of moves.
At the very end of the day-stay area was a fire exit, and as the door opened onto the hot sticky night, which was full of smoke, acrid smuts, and the stench of burning, Maxine found herself at the mid-section of an ironwork fire escape that looked like it had been constructed at the same time as the building.
She looked down through the layers of metal, sixty to seventy feet of meshed iron running down between the steps, with the strap of the bag digging into her shoulder. Out in the open air, she felt vulnerable again, chill with sudden vertigo and piled on fear. She cursed silently that she hadn’t taken a moment to pick up the baton from when she’d tripped over Sudhindra on the darkened stairwell inside the institute. There were four flights of green-painted ironwork leading down to the security gantry, where the last flight of stairs was held up on a couple of chains running through a pulley balanced with counterweights. They’d have to make it down there, and then release the fire escape mechanism to get down the last fifteen feet to the parking lot.
All well and good as that seemed on the outside, the burning apartment block was now a rage of fire all the way down its sides. No longer a Roman candle, but more a blazing matchbox. Windows popping all the way down, and smoke… so much smoke, not just rising into the night, but now caught by winds whipped up by all the surrounding fires, billowing outwards in choking gusts right alongside the institute. They would have to dive down the fire escape now, into thickening clouds and soupy air, finding their way down and locating the mechanism to lower the last set of stairs and then make it to the ground.
“Well we’re not going to get anywhere just looking at it, Sudhindra. You ready for this?”
Sudhindra’s mouth said “Yes,” but his eyes disagreed vehemently. Maxine brought her head back inside the building and took three ever deeper lungfuls of air. It was only ten flights. That’s all. Ten flights. If worst came to worst, she could climb over the side and drop the last fifteen feet. Yes, it was onto concrete, but if she remembered her father’s stories of parachuting in the army correctly, it was just a matter of bending your knees and rolling.
Bend and roll. Bend and roll.
Maxine took off into the gusts of black heat. Holding onto the hand rail, she went down the first three flights of stairs gauging the depth and width of each tread, counting like she had inside.
The air was ruined by the smoke, as was the visibility, but at least they were making progress. She was guessing, but they were maybe twenty feet into the descent—not enough for the fall not to kill them should they slip, but progress all the same.
The smoke raged around her, sometimes leaving a tiny gap in the billows so that she could see beyond it into the city, but other times there was just stinging pain in her eyes as the smoke, filled with gritty debris and who knew what other substances, silted up in her eyes. Her breath was holding out, though, and she didn’t feel her strength flagging any as she made the next section’s turn and swirled to go down the next flight.
Sudhindra wasn’t so lucky. She felt him crash into her shoulder as he took a tumble, his arms flailing and a short gasping scream coming from his mouth as he crashed into the gantry with a desperate thud.
Don’t take a breath! Don’t breathe! Maxine screamed in her head, using both her hands to steady herself against the gantry. The smoke was as dense as ever, but she could hear Sudhindra coughing and spluttering. Choking and retching. She couldn’t see him as the smoke curled and rushed around her, but since she could hear him, she took a step in his direction and grabbed hold of a limb. An arm. She dared not speak and release her own breath, but she pulled the little doctor to his feet and walked him towards the next flight down.
“Can’t… catch my… breath… can’t….”
Maxine groped out and put a hand over his mouth, closing his chin with her fingers. Slapping the underside of his jaw to make the point that he needed to keep his mouth closed, and still she carried on down the stairs.
Sudhindra took the hint and kept moving downward beside her in the impossible conditions. A hollow in the smoke showed Maxine his face. Eyes bugling, black-flecked snot leaking from his nose. Throat bulging where he was coughing internally but trying hard not to splutter his lips apart.
Six more flights to go. Just six.
They made it down the first two of them before the iron band of missing oxygen began to close around her chest, forcing lead and concrete into her legs and chaining her ankles together as her energy sapped away. It couldn’t have been more than a minute since they’d come out the side of the institute, but suddenly it felt like a lifetime since she’d last taken a breath.
Sudhindra was in a much worse position. He was straining not to breathe, and Maxine could feel his hand in hers squeezing her fingers to breaking point.
Just five more flights. Just five more.
Maxine lifted the sheer tonnage of old iron now residing in both her feet and continued downwards with Sudhindra in tow. Leading him like a zombie, no resistance in his movements. His body was all but limp, his steps automatic. At one point, his head rested on her shoulder.
Down and turning, mind bursting with fear lights like a road dotted with red flares on a rainy night after a road accident. Eyes rubbed with sandpaper until they bled, throat feeling like her head had been turned three hundred and sixty degrees by the clawed fingers of a giant.
Last flight. Just one to go.
Sudhindra fell to his knees. There was no fight left in his body. He was a man in his forties, just like Maxine, but the physical side of life, she imagined, was not one he’d been interested in. Where she had kept herself fit with regular visits to the gym, keeping in shape with swimming and aerobic exercise, Sudhindra’s body had been accustomed to the slower lane of life, the one full of good curries, lots of rice, and the beautiful deserts of the subcontinent of his heritage. He just wasn’t up to the physicality of this.
And even though Maxine knew she’d kept herself in shape, she even surprised herself as she leant over the gantry, dropped the medicine bag to the ground, and then bent and, with one last supreme effort, lifted Sudhindra up onto her shoulder in the way she’d seen the men of the fire department do many times, and heaved the little doctor onto her shoulder and continued down the fire escape one impossible step at a time.
She reached the security gantry, and there was a sudden break in the smoke. Not a huge break, but one large enough for her to suck in a life affirming breath, and to show her the sign which announced PULL LEVER TO OPERATE SECURITY STAIRCASE in red letters on a white metal background.
With renewed strength and an almost delicious sense of optimism, she pulled the lever, and counterbalance weights rose on their chains and, with a clank that sounded like the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard, the stairs began to lower.
Maxine didn’t wait for the ironwork to hit the
concrete before she took the first step. Hefting her shoulder to make Sudhindra’s weight shift to a slightly more comfortable position, she began the descent to the parking lot.
Within twenty seconds, she was down and laying Sudhindra on the concrete as gently as she could. She checked that he was breathing even though unconscious, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, and then looked around for the bag of medication.
She found it soon enough—swinging in one hand of Gabby Fallows, who swung McCready’s baton in her other.
7
Josh looked around to see where Tally’s voice had come from. The deck of the Sea-Hawk looked deserted, but his daughter’s voice hadn’t come from below… it had sounded out in the open air, whipped away by the wind.
Spackman came back up onto the deck and joined Josh in scanning the area.
“Tally!” Josh called. “Where are you?”
Nothing.
Rising panic gripped at his guts. Leaving Tally alone with the probationers and Petersen, even though he’d been bound and hogtied, had been a terrible mistake. What had he been thinking?
Perhaps Rollins, their murderously insane captain, had evaded them, and somehow gotten himself into the cabin and taken Tally. That sent a chill shiver through his guts as Josh remembered the pile of dead crew on the bow deck. Was that to be Tally’s fate now?
“Tally!” Josh screamed, his voice cracking at the high octave, his throat was so tight with fear.
And then he saw them.
They moved out from behind the main mast into full view, Tally held with an elbow around her throat and a long kitchen knife’s resting edge at her cheek.
But it wasn’t Rollins who was holding his daughter.
It was Ten-Foot.
Josh made to run forward, but Ten-Foot, his eyes wide and his voice firm, shouted, “No! Stay where you are or I cut her pretty face right in front of your eyes.”
“What… what are you doing?”
“Takin’ over the ship, bossman. I’ve seen the bodies back there. We’ve been following you, and it’s just been a trail of the dead. I’m not waiting around down there to end up skewered. Figured I’d get myself a little insurance.”
“Don’t be a fool, Ten-Foot. We go back and tell them this story; they’ll lock you up and throw away the key. I know you’re scared…”
Ten-Foot raised the knife, and held it as if his next move would be to bury it in Tally’s head. “I’m not scared. And I ain’t no fool. I’m in charge now, and the others are with me, right?”
One by one, the probationers came out of the hatch and stood beside him. Not every one of them looked convinced they were doing the right thing, but that was a consideration for another time. Right now, whatever it took, Josh was going to have to find a way to get Tally out of danger. There were tears in her eyes and her knees were trembling. The expression on her face was one of sheer terror.
“Has it occurred to you; the killer is still aboard the ship?”
Ten-Foot squinted at Josh. The same confusion played around his face as that which Josh had seen on Petersen’s grim visage as he’d hunted them with the ax. Was Ten-Foot suffering the same effects on his behavior? Was his aggression ramping up to the point where he’d abandoned all sensible courses of action? Josh had to hope Ten-Foot hadn’t yet reached an equal level of insanity as Rollins or Petersen.
“Everyone’s dead,” Ten-Foot replied. “They all killed each other.”
Josh shook his head. “What do you think we’re doing up here?”
“Trying to get the radio working so you can pin all these murders on me and the others. I know what you’re like, bossman, I know what’s in your heart.”
Paranoid and vengeful. Not a good combination. But at least it was something Josh could work with. “I promise you; we’re not going anywhere near the radio. Not right now, definitely. We’re looking for Rollins. He’s on the ship somewhere. He’s armed and he may well be waiting for us to lower our guard so he can attack again.”
The probationers began looking at each other and whispering. Ten-Foot was having none of it. “Shut up!” he screamed at the others as he put the knife point-first against Tally’s temple.
“Cut the BS. I know you’re lying. You keep lying and I’ll skewer her, get me?”
“Ten-Foot, listen to me. Something has happened. To all of us, I think. It’s hit some of us worse than others. It’s turned Rollins into a maniac, and it’s making you paranoid. You didn’t feel like this when we dealt with Petersen, did you? We were all good, and suddenly you think I’m calling the Coast Guard and trying to pin a murder rap on you. Come on, man. You’ve known me for two years, since you came out of juvie. I’ve been your probation officer all that time. Have I ever been less than straight with you? Have I ever let you down? Dammit, Ten-Foot, I argued for you to come on this trip when everyone else was telling me I was mad to do it! You think I got you out here so I could spring my trap like some cut-price James Bond villain? Come on, Ten-Foot. Think, man! You’re not an idiot. You know this isn’t you. This isn’t what you do. You’re not a murderer, and you’re not going to hurt my daughter. Come on… let her go so we can all talk about this and sort it out, but we have to find Rollins. He’s here somewhere. Might even be listening to us now.
“We’re all in danger until he’s found. You. Me. Everyone.”
Ten-Foot’s face was so confused, it looked like it was doing algebra his mind thought to be quadratic equations. The knife wavered at Tally’s temple, and her lips came apart as the pressure was taken off. Josh could almost hear the sigh of relief that followed. But they weren’t there yet.
Ten-Foot was confused, open to suggestion, but he was volatile and he was still holding the knife.
“Look, why don’t you and I go looking for Rollins? Yeah? Ten-Foot. You can keep the knife, and your guys here can look after Tally while we go find him. Right now, it’s me and Spackman, but with you with us, we can cover more ground. Out in the open, these guys can see who’s coming at them. They’re safe for now. How about it?”
Whatever processes were going on inside Ten-Foot’s head right now, they seemed like they were working towards Josh’s suggestion. Ten-Foot took a juddering breath, and then he relaxed his arm from around Tally’s throat.
Tally ducked out from Ten-Foot’s grip and she ran for Josh, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It all happened so fast. One minute, he was with Petersen, and then he had me around the throat, telling all the others you were trying to get the radio working so you could sell them out. I don’t understand why he changed so fast.”
Josh kissed the top of her head, glad beyond all measure that his daughter was out of immediate danger for now.
Ten-Foot looked exhausted. He was leaning one hand on the main mast, his other holding the knife loosely by his side. His eyes seemed unfocussed.
His hand opened and the knife clattered to the deck.
Then, with a crack of unutterable pain, it seemed like Josh’s head exploded as a fresh killing headache inflated in his head like an airbag in an auto crash, and everyone once again fell to their knees, and then onto the deck to writhe, holding their temples and yelling their agonies to the four winds.
Josh couldn’t tell if the wetness on his cheek was water or blood, and he was too terrified of the pain that might greet him if he opened his eyes to check. So, with stiff muscles attached to joints that had been frozen in time, he reached up to his face, brushed the liquid off his skin, and slowly pressed his fingers to his lips.
The taste of water. Sea water.
His clothes were flapping in the breeze; he felt them rippling up his back, and for a few moments he really had no idea where he was or what had happened to him.
And then, as the events of the previous few hours came rushing back in a tumbling freakshow of horror, he felt his hands involuntarily reaching out to find Tally. One hand found and rested on her arm. The groan from her lips told Josh
she was in exactly the same state as him.
He opened one eye and risked a look along the deck. He could see Ten-Foot keeled over; a ribbon of drool laced from his lips to the varnished wood. Behind him were the other probationers—like Josh, collapsed to the deck. Some were still unconscious, others rubbing at their temples. One, like a flipped turtle trying to right itself, was attempting to lift one shoulder away from the floor and getting nowhere with his efforts.
The next thing that struck Josh was that it was daylight. When he’d slipped into unconsciousness, it had been full dark, coming up on midnight if he guessed correctly. Now the sky was a dirty yellow, filled with scudding, bruised purple-bellied clouds, pushed by a wind that was whipping across the deck stronger than it had before. It brought stingingly cold sprays of seawater up over the side rails and scattered them like rain.
The sails overhead were still straining; a rope had come loose from one corner of a sail at some point in the last couple of hours, and the canvas it had been holding to a spar was flapping crazily in the near gale.
“Dad… Dad, are you okay?”
Tally crawled up onto her knees. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin pale. She was shivering in the cold. Josh raised his head up, wondering if the pain of the headache had truly gone and gingerly rubbing at his temples as if doing so would make any difference at all to the internal processes. “I think so,” he muttered.
“We’ve been out for hours,” Tally said, sitting up and rolling onto her backside.
Josh shook his head gently, hoping that he wasn’t pushing his luck too far. The probationers, all except Ten-Foot, were moving now. Getting onto their knees or tentatively up onto their feet, holding onto ropes or wooden balustrades for support. Ten-Foot, hadn’t moved at all, and Josh, suddenly concerned that he couldn’t see if Ten-Foot was breathing, began to crawl across the deck towards him. He couldn’t summon up any burning antipathy towards the boy, especially after what had happened with Tally. It was clear that, in some of them, whatever had caused the headaches had also made psychological changes. Captain Rollins was not a murderer, and Ten-Foot wasn’t a paranoid psychotic. The changes had affected them all in different ways. Now that Josh had seen it come on later in Ten-Foot than it had in Rollins, he was suddenly gripped with the fear of what might happen if he were next, or God forbid Tally? What if they all had to take their turn at dancing the cemetery tango?
Supernova EMP Series (Book 1): Dark End Page 7
